Adrian Cosoroaba
Xilinx

In FPGA system design, maximizing performance requires a balanced mix of performance, efficient components, logic fabric, on-chip memory, DSP, and I/O bandwidth. This article explains how you can benefit from Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA building blocks, particularly the new ExpressFabric technology, in your quest for higher system-level performance. Also explored are key features of the ExpressFabric architecture with examples that quantify the anticipated performance improvements for logic and arithmetic functions. Benchmarks based on actual customer designs will show that Virtex-5 ExpressFabric technology performs on average 30% better than previous-generation Virtex-4 FPGAs. With the new logic fabric (in which you can implement functions such as counters, adders, and RAM/ROM storage) and available hard IP blocks, memory, and DSP (optimized to operate at clock rates as fast as 550 MHz), the Virtex-5 FPGA is clearly the platform of choice for high-performance designs.