Pico Communications E-14 Computer Hardware User Manual

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E‐14HardwareReferenceManual www.picocomputing.com PicoComputing,Inc.

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FieldProgrammableGateArray

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ThecoreofthePicoE‐14isahighperformanceVirtex‐4FPGA.IncludedintheFPGAaretheFPGA

Fabric,aPower‐PC™processor,ultrahigh‐speedDSPslicesandDDR2RAM.

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FPGAFabric:

The“Fabric”ofanFPGAcomprisesanarrayoflogicelementsthatcan

beconnectedinvirtually

unlimitedpatterns.Thesepatternsoflogicelementscanbeusedtoperformbasicmathematical

functionssuchasadditionandsubtraction,orcanbegroupedtogethertoperformcomplexfunctions

likeFastFourierTransforms.Logicelementscanevenbeconnectedtocreateacustomsoftprocessor.

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TheadvantageoftheFPGAisthattheinternallogiccanbeoptimizedforaspecificapplication.FPGAs

arealsoabletoexecuteoperationsinparallel,notbeinglimitedbysequentialexecutionlikea

traditionalprocessor.FPGAoperationscanbeexecutedinaparallel,pipelinedorevenan

asynchronousmanner.TheFPGAallowsincredibleapplicationspeedwithverylowpower

consumption.Yourimaginationisreallythelimit.

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DSPSlice:

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EmbeddedwithintheFPGAarespecialareasthataredesignedtofacilitatehighspeed“digitalsignal

processing.”TheseareasarecalledDSPslices.TheDSPslicecanbeconfiguredinavarietyofdifferent

ways.ForexampleoneDSPslicecanbeconfiguredtobeonetapofanFIRfilter.DSPslicesarefully

pipelinedandfeatureincrediblespeed.WhenconfiguredforFIRfilteringtheDSPslicehasa

guaranteedperformanceof500MHzwithalatencyofonecycle.An18x18multiplyandaccumulate

alsorunsat250MHzwithalatencyoftwocycles.Smallerdatawidthsallowhigherclockspeeds.

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FPGAResources:

FreeFPGACores www.opencores.org

Virtex‐4Website www.xilinx.com/virtex4

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Pico Communications E-14 Computer Hardware User Manual