Opal Kelly Announces XEM8320 FPGA Development Platform for Xilinx FPGAs

By Tiera Oliver

Associate Editor

Embedded Computing Design

March 14, 2022

News

Opal Kelly Announces XEM8320 FPGA Development Platform for Xilinx FPGAs

Opal Kelly announced the XEM8320-AU25P, the official development platform for the Xilinx Artix  UltraScale+ FPGA.

The new platform features Opal Kelly's FrontPanel SDK for building high-performance, software connected FPGA applications. The XEM8320-AU25P also leverages the versatile SYZYGY modular connectivity for rapid prototyping and expansion.

The XEM8320-AU25P features the Xilinx Artix UltraScale+ XCAU25P-2FFVB676E FPGA and USB 3.0 Type C SuperSpeed interface. The platform also includes 11 highspeed gigabit transceiver lanes via Artix UltraScale+ transceivers. Artix UltraScale+ transceivers support serial standards such as 10 GbE, JESD-204B, DisplayPort, PCI Express, SATA, HD-SDI, XAUI, and Aurora.

The XEM8320 includes the FPGA, USB Type C SuperSpeed connector, 1 GiB DDR4 memory, 48 MiB total serial flash, three low-jitter fixed-frequency clock oscillators, and switching power supplies to power the entire board. The platform is also fitted with several SYZYGY connectors -- four Standard ports and two Transceiver ports -- for expansion and system development.

The XEM8320 and Artix UltraScale+ FPGA were designed to capture, process, and move these data streams for applications such as LIDAR, RADAR, software-defined radio, advanced photonics, and high frame rate machine vision.

The Artix UltraScale+ FPGA is part of Xilinx's latest smaller, thinner cost-optimized portfolio. System integrators can use the XEM8320 boards featuring these FPGAs to build a fully operational proof-of-concept for industrial automation, machine vision, healthcare sciences, networking and communication, test and measurement, broadcast, consumer, transportation, and AI-enabled applications. Opal Kelly plans to release a system-on-module (SOM) in Q2/22 to provide a convenient path from XEM8320 development to system production with full FrontPanel SDK support.

The XEM8320 is fully supported by Opal Kelly’s multi-platform FrontPanel SDK, a trio of firmware, software, and gateware that connects software applications, FPGA gateware, and external hardware via the platform's USB Type C SuperSpeed interface. The FrontPanel SDK is designed to add value to the XEM8320 by enabling application-specific engagement on a general-purpose evaluation product with software hardware integration.

The FrontPanel SDKis designed to reduce development time and risk, and accelerates time-to-market. Its multi-platform, multi-language application programming interface (API) has nearly two decades of demonstrated success, proven and refined in thousands of customer deployments worldwide, across diverse applications and industries.

For modular expansion, the XEM8320 features SYZYGY, an open standard of low-cost peripherals and compact connectors that handle the high-bandwidth requirements of today's data acquisition, instrumentation, sensing, and networking devices.

Opal Kelly and other manufacturers offer an array of off-the-shelf SYZYGY carriers and peripherals for data acquisition, image capture, interfacing, and instrumentation -- ideal for evaluation and prototyping for many applications. System integrators can also develop custom peripherals with design resources and source code available from Opal Kelly.

The XEM8320-AU25P is available now through Opal Kelly’s online web store at $1,349.95 each.

For more information, visit: https://opalkelly.com/products/xem8320/

Tiera Oliver, Associate Editor for Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for web content edits, product news, and constructing stories. She also assists with newsletter updates as well as contributing and editing content for ECD podcasts and the ECD YouTube channel. Before working at ECD, Tiera graduated from Northern Arizona University where she received her B.S. in journalism and political science and worked as a news reporter for the university’s student led newspaper, The Lumberjack.

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