Craig Abramson et al.
Xilinx

With the advent of the Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT field programmable gate array (FPGA), you have an opportunity to get ahead of the embedded system design curve. The need to quickly develop and validate embedded systems has never been more apparent than in the realm of embedded system design. Combining software and hardware to demonstrate this at a system level has become commonplace in the industry. By providing a more tightly coupled, flexible, scalable solution, you have a means to address many hardware and software System-on-a-chip (SOC) design challenges.

FPGAs provide a significantly faster path for designers to rapidly develop, prototype, and test their embedded designs. This article provides a detailed description of the embedded processing innovations in the PowerPC 440 processor block and system interconnect. A key area of focus in the Virtex-5 FXT FPGA processor block is simplification through integration. A corollary to this is ease of development and test. Quickly bringing up a system to allow software developers to get a head start on actual hardware is a major emphasis for the Virtex-5 FXT device's PowerPC 440 processor.