Introduction
The XEM8370 is a compact, mezzanine-style FPGA integration module featuring the AMD Kintex UltraScale+ FPGA and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity.
Designed as a full-featured FPGA integration system, the XEM8370 provides access to 301 I/O pins on its 1156-pin Kintex UltraScale+ device and has 2-GiByte DDR4 SDRAM available to the FPGA. Two SPI Flash devices provide non-volatile memory, one attached to the USB microcontroller and one attached to the FPGA.
Available with KU11P density, the XEM8370 is designed for high-performance system integrations including transceiver-capable peripherals such as JESD204B data converters.
Documentation and Reference Materials
The following is a comprehensive list of documentation available for this device.
| XEM8370 User’s Manual | This online documentation space. |
| XEM8370 Pins Reference | The interactive Pins reference for the device provides detailed pinout information as well as automated constraint file generation. Export functionality is provided to PDF, CSV. Constraint files are provided for UCF, XCD (AMD) and QSF, SDF (Altera). |
| FrontPanel SDK User’s Manual | The online documentation space for the FrontPanel SDK. |
| FrontPanel API Reference | Online API reference with detailed usage for every API method. |
Functional Block Diagram
FPGA
The XEM8370 is offered in one variant. The table below lists some of the features of the device. Please consult the AMD documentation for a more thorough overview.
| FEATURE | XEM8370-KU11P |
|---|---|
| FPGA | XCKU11P-1FFVA1156E |
| System Logic Cells | 653,100 |
| CLB Flip-Flops | 597,120 |
| CLB LUTs | 298,560 |
| Distributed RAM | 9.1 Mib |
| Block RAM | 600 blocks (21.0 Mib) |
| DSP Slices | 2,928 |
| CMTs (1 MMCM + 2 PLLs) | 8 |
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Interface
The XEM8370 uses a Cypress FX3 USB microcontroller to make the XEM a USB 3.0 peripheral. As a USB peripheral, the XEM is instantly recognized as a plug and play peripheral on millions of PCs. More importantly, FPGA downloads to the XEM happen quickly, virtual instruments under FrontPanel update quickly, and data transfers are blazingly fast.
On-board Peripherals
The XEM8370 is designed to compactly support a large number of applications with a small number of on-board peripherals. These peripherals are listed below.
2-GiByte 32-bit-wide DDR4 Synchronous DRAM
The module includes 2-GiByte DDR4 SDRAM with a full 32-bit quad-wide interface to the FPGA. This SDRAM is attached exclusively to the FPGA and does not share any pins with the expansion connector. With the -1 speed grade of the Kintex Ultrascale+, the maximum clock rate is 1200 MHz for a supported peak memory bandwidth of 76.8 Gib/s.
The DDR4 SDRAM is a Micron MT40A1G16RC-062E IT:B (or compatible).
FPGA Flash – 32 MiB Serial Flash Memory
A 256 Mib serial flash device (ISSI IS25WP256D or equivalent) provides on-board non-volatile storage for the FPGA. This device is attached directly to the FPGA through the FPGA configuration interface for use in your design.
System Flash – 16 MiB Serial Flash Memory
A 128 Mib serial flash device (Cypress S25FS128SAGBHI200 or equivalent) provides on-board non-volatile storage accessible to the USB microcontroller. This device is used to store device firmware and configuration settings as well as other user assets such as calibration data. Erase, read, and write functions are available at all times (with or without a configured FPGA) through the use of FrontPanel API methods.
Adjustable Voltage I/O
The XEM8370 has 3 user adjustable voltage regulators to power the FPGA’s I/O levels. For more information see the Device Settings page as well as the Powering the XEM8370 page.
LEDs
Eight LEDs are available for general use as indicators.
Cooling Fan Controller
A connector provides power to an optional fan and heat sink unit that clips to the FPGA. This power is under the control of the USB microcontroller. The DC input voltage to the board is applied to the fan when active. See the FanSink page for more information on the available fansink unit. See the Device Settings page for more information on fan control.
Device Sensors
On-board voltage and current sensors provide real-time access to several power supply measurements through the FrontPanel SDK sensors API. See the device sensors page for more information.
FrontPanel Support
The XEM8370 is fully supported by Opal Kelly’s FrontPanel Application. FrontPanel augments the limited peripheral support with a host of PC-based virtual instruments such as LEDs, hex displays, pushbuttons, toggle buttons, and so on. Essentially, this makes your PC a reconfigurable I/O board and adds tremendous value to the XEM8370 as an experimentation or prototyping system.
Programmer’s Interface
In addition to complete support within FrontPanel, the XEM8370 is also fully supported by the FrontPanel SDK, a powerful C++ class library available to Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux programmers allowing you to easily interface your own software to the XEM.
In addition to the C++ library, wrappers have been written for C#, Java, and Python making the API available under those languages as well. Sample wrappers (unsupported) are also provided for Matlab and LabVIEW.
Complete documentation and several sample programs are installed with FrontPanel.
Copyright
Software, documentation, samples, and related materials are Copyright © 2006-2023 Opal Kelly Incorporated.
Opal Kelly Incorporated
Portland, OR
https://www.opalkelly.com
All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication, in whole or part, of this document by any means except for brief excerpts in published reviews is prohibited without the express written permission of Opal Kelly Incorporated.
Opal Kelly® and FrontPanel® are registered trademarks of Opal Kelly Incorporated. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Microsoft and Windows are both registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners and no trademark rights are claimed.