Introduction
The XEM7310 is a compact, mezzanine-style FPGA integration module featuring the Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA and SuperSpeed USB 3.0 connectivity via a USB 3.0 receptacle.
Designed as a full-featured development and integration system, the XEM7310 provides access to over 120 I/O pins on its 484-pin Artix-7 device and has 1-GiByte DDR3 SDRAM available to the FPGA. Two SPI Flash devices provide a total of 32 MiB of non-volatile memory, one attached to the USB microcontroller and one attached to the FPGA.
Available with A75 and A200 FPGA densities, the XEM7310 is designed for medium- to large-sized FPGA designs with a wide variety of external interface requirements.
Documentation and Reference Materials
The following is a comprehensive list of documentation available for this device.
| XEM7310 User’s Manual | This online documentation space. |
| XEM7310 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 (Xilinx) 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 XEM7310 is offered in two variants. These variants are identical except for the FPGA provided. The table below lists some of the differences between the two devices. Please consult the Xilinx documentation for a more thorough comparison.
| FEATURE | XEM7310-A75 | XEM7310-A200 |
|---|---|---|
| FPGA | XC7A75T-1FGG | XC7A200T-1FBG |
| Slice Count | 11,800 | 33,650 |
| D Flip-Flops | 94,400 | 269,200 |
| Distributed RAM | 892 Kib | 2,888 Kib |
| Block RAM | 3,780 Kib | 13,140 Kib |
| DSP Slices | 180 | 740 |
| Clock Management Tiles | 6 | 10 |
SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Interface
The XEM7310 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 XEM7310 is designed to compactly support a large number of applications with a small number of on-board peripherals. These peripherals are listed below.
Low-Jitter Crystal Oscillators
A fixed-frequency, 200 MHz, low-jitter oscillator is included on-board and outputs LVDS to the FPGA. The Artix-7 FPGA can produce a wide range of clock frequencies using the on-chip DCM and PLL capabilities.
1-GiByte Quad-Wide DDR3 Synchronous DRAM
The module also includes 1-GiByte DDR3 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. The maximum clock rate of the SDRAM is 400 MHz. With the -1 speed grade of the Artix-7, the maximum clock rate is 400 MHz for a supported peak memory bandwidth of 25.6 Gib/s.
The DDR3 SDRAM is a Micron MT41K256M16HA-125:E (or compatible).
FPGA Flash – 16 MiB Serial Flash Memory
A 128 Mib serial flash device (Numonyx N25Q128A13B1240E or equivalent) provides on-board non-volatile storage for the FPGA. This device is attached directly to the FPGA for use in your design.
System Flash – 16 MiB Serial Flash Memory
A 128 Mib serial flash device (Numonyx N25Q128A11B1240E 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 FPGA configuration files or 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.
LEDs
Eight LEDs are available for general use as indicators.
FrontPanel Support
The XEM7310 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 XEM7310 as an experimentation or prototyping system.
Programmer’s Interface
In addition to complete support within FrontPanel, the XEM7310 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 © 2006-2021 Opal Kelly Incorporated.
Opal Kelly Incorporated
Portland, OR
https://www.opalkelly.com
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