February 2016
19
C
hips
& C
omponents
Well prepared for
the six major markets of the future
By Mike Santarini,
Xilinx
This article explains that
All Programmable technologies deliver
software intelligence and hardware
optimization to enable development
of todays’ major emerging
market trends.
Six important emerging markets - video/
vision, ADAS/autonomous vehicles, Indus-
trial Internet of Things (IIoT), 5G wireless,
SDN/NFV and cloud computing - will soon
merge into an omni-interconnected network
of networks that will have a far-reaching
impact on the world we live in. This conver-
gence of intelligent systems will enrich our
lives with smart products that are manufac-
tured in smart factories and driven to us safely
in smart vehicles on the streets of smart cit-
ies - all interconnected by smart wired and
wireless networks deploying services from
the cloud. Xilinx varied customer base is
leveraging its All Programmable devices and
software-defined solutions to make these
new markets and their convergence a reality.
Over the course of the last 30 years, its cus-
tomers have become the leaders and key inno-
vators in all of these markets. Where Xilinx
has played a growing role in each generation
of the vision/video, ADAS, industrial, and
wired and wireless communications segments,
today its customers are placing All Program-
mable FPGAs, SoCs and 3D ICs at the core of
the smarter technologies they are developing
in these emerging segments. Customers are
using Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs and
SoCs in their vision platforms for real-time
analytics to create ADAS (advanced driver
assistance systems) systems with high-veloc-
ity object detection/recognition; clinically
precise imaging systems that help surgeons
guide robotic instruments with pinpoint
accuracy; and UAVs and surveillance systems
that have instantaneous friend-vs-foe rec-
ognition and tracking. With the soon-to-ar-
rive 16-nanometer Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC
boasting a total of seven onboard processing
cores (quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, dual-
core Cortex-R5 and a Mali GPU core), users
will be able to create even more intelligent and
highly integrated video systems, speeding up
ADAS push toward autonomous vehicles and
Industrial IoT drive to Industry 4.0 factories
and smart-city infrastructure.
In the early 2000s, Xilinx added automo-
tive-grade variants to its FPGA product port-
folio. Ever since then, automotive customers
have given its devices a growing role in their
efforts to enrich the driving experience
through electronics. The automotive indus-
try has gone through a remarkable renais-
sance of quality, safety and reliability thanks
to electronics. For many decades, automotive
electronics largely consisted of wire harnesses
connecting lights and radios to a battery
and an alternator. Then, in the early 2000s,
OEMs began using electronic control units to
replace highly unreliable mechanical actua-
tors. Every year since then, OEMs have added
more advanced electronics to their vehicle
lines. What’s more, the development cycles for
bringing these innovations to consumers have
shortened, thanks in large part to the wide use
of All Programmable devices. Xilinx devices
made their debut in automotive infotainment
systems but are now making a definitive mark
in ADAS.
Today, Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC is
fast becoming the de facto platform provider
for advanced ADAS systems. Audi, Mer-
cedes-Benz, BMW, Ford, Chrysler, Honda,
Mazda, Nissan, Toyota, Acura and Volkswa-
gen are among the OEMS using ZynqSoCs
or other All Programmable devices in their
ADAS systems. The ZynqSoC serves as a
multicamera, multifeature driver assist plat-
form, a high-resolution video and graphics
platform, a vehicle networking and connec-
tivity platform and an image-processing and
recognition platform. Customers implement
algorithms for the most complex and com-
pute-intensive functions of their design in
the logic portion of the ZynqSoC and use the
onboard ARM processing system for serial
processing.
With its seven processors, the new Zynq-
Ultrascale+ MPSoC is destined to provide
even more fuel for innovation as OEMs drive
toward semi-autonomous and fully autono-
mous vehicles. With 64-bit application pro-
cessors, real-time processors, a graphics
Figure 1. Customers are lever-
aging All Programmable solu-
tions to create innovations for
the emerging markets of ADAS,
Industrial IoT, video/vision, 5G
wireless, SDN/VFV networks
and cloud computing.
