This article was originally published on July 23, 2019.
Versal ACAP Portfolio
Manuel Uhm, Director of Silicon Marketing at Xilinx, spoke with Signals & Bits about Xilinx’s new Versal® ACAPs. Manuel walks through the motivation behind the ACAP and Xilinx’s vision to reach all types of developers. He then describes the Versal portfolio, all device series, and how each addresses a specific set of applications—ranging from AI in the cloud to edge systems.
The Sweet Spot
ACAPs represent the ‘sweet spot’ of hardware adaptability and hardened infrastructure so developers can focus on their secret sauce. Among those hardened (but reprogrammable) features is the AI Engine— a compute engine specializing in AI inference for cloud to edge applications, and complex signal processing common in wireless markets. Since Versal addresses a breadth of markets, some applications do not require the highest AI inference. For those applications, Xilinx offers Versal devices optimized for other capabilities—without AI engines.
Secret Weapon
Manuel moves on to highlight the defining characteristic of an ACAP and how it offers a design path that requires no RTL experience, though is still available for those who want it. He points out how the network-on-chip serves as a critical enabler of this ease of programming and why it’s considered ACAP’s ‘secret weapon.’
Manuel goes beyond the silicon in this podcast and addresses the criticality of Versal ACAP’s ‘multi-layered’ tool flow. He also emphasizes the company’s vision of reaching all developers coming from different design entry-points.
Interested?
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