Great River Technology Licenses PLDA EZ DMA IP Core for Use in its Matrix PCIe4 High Speed Video Boards

The resulting solution enables high speed video in avionics applications

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- November 29, 2007 – PLDA, the industry leader in the high-speed bus IP market, today announced that Great River Technology has licensed PLDA’s EZ DMA IP core for Xilinx® 65nm Virtex™-5 FPGAs. The PLDA core will be integrated into Great River Technology’s MATRIX PCIe4 high speed ARINC 818 video card for the avionics industry.

The PLDA EZ DMA IP Core selected by Great River is a DMA controller designed for Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT and SXT FPGAs with their on-chip endpoint blocks for PCI Express. The PLDA EZ DMA IP is RTL-level IP that connects to either a Virtex-5 LXT or DSP-optimized SXT FPGA to provide an easy-to-use, yet powerful DMA based interface to the PCIe bus. The PLDA EZ DMA IP includes a full featured PCIe testbench and a Software Development Kit including a PCIe software driver.

In addition to their on-chip RocketIO™ multi-gigabit serial transceivers, Virtex-5 LXT and SXT FPGAs each contain one PCIe endpoint block which implements transaction layer, data link layer, and physical layer functions to provide complete PCIe endpoint functionality with minimal FPGA logic utilization. This allows designers to reduce cost by integrating multiple functions into a single PCIe-enabled FPGA, preserve software investment and extend infrastructure life with scaleable bandwidth, and retarget designs without changing their PCIe interface implementation.

“Great River Technology needed an interface capable of sustained throughput of 400+MBps for 3 and 4 Gbps ARINC 818 applications, and our MATRIX PCIe4 design has surpassed this.” said Tim Keller, Director of Marketing at Great River. “We required a very short design cycle and by utilizing PLDA’s EZ DMA IP Core, we were able to have a working prototype quickly, significantly lowering our time to market.”

“In order to acquire and process video at high speed, Great River Technology needed a high bandwidth bus. PCI Express was the best technical fit.” said Stephane Hauradou, PLDA’s CTO. “PLDA’s EZ DMA IP used together with Xilinx Virtex 5LXT & SXT helped reduce the risk inherent with designing with PCIe. Using EZ DMA IP also dramatically cut design time since it provides a simple way to hook-up your design to the PCIe bus.”

About Great River Technology

Great River Technology specializes in high performance digital video development tools and products for aerospace and military customers. Great River Technology's tools are used in design and research labs, production facilities, production aircraft, and flight maintenance facilities. GRT offers both custom and "off-the-shelf" board level products for ARINC 818 real-time, high-speed and low latency video links.

About PLDA

PLDA designs and sells a wide range of ASIC and FPGA IP solutions including bus controllers, bridges and audio/video IPs. The company offers complete solutions, including IP cores, hardware, software, consulting services, and comprehensive technical support provided directly by the IP designers.

Founded in 1996 and profitable since its inception, PLDA is privately owned. The company maintains offices in San Jose, California, France and Tunisia and has a strong international distribution network. For additional information about PLDA, please visit http://www.plda.com.

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