SYSTEMS

Mercury Computer Systems announced that it has joined the Xilinx Alliance Program. The Company also announced the availability of a new Mercury Serial RapidIO IP core for Xilinx Virtex high-performance and Spartan low-cost FPGA families. The Xilinx Alliance Program is composed of companies with the best available technologies in the areas of IP cores, EDA, DSP, and embedded development tools, as well as design services, board-level products, integrated circuits, and electronic components. Member companies provide optimized products and services that contribute to a broad selection of industry-standard solutions dedicated for use with Xilinx programmable logic. Mercury is a leading provider of Serial RapidIO-based products. The new Serial RapidIO offering is a full-featured, high-function IP core that incorporates a logical layer, a transport layer and a physical layer, and supports input/output and message passing. "Mercury Serial RapidIO IP is proven technology backed by extensive testing and successful deployment in large-scale systems," said Tracy Richardson, Director of the Silicon Solutions Group, Advanced Solutions business unit at Mercury. "Our IP cores are designed with Mercury's deep experience in complex multiprocessing systems that allow customers to deliver reliable, interoperable solutions with reduced time to market." Compliant with the widely adopted Serial RapidIO specification 1.2, the Mercury IP core targets a wide range of applications for embedded, communications, wireless, storage, and defense markets. Designers using Xilinx Virtex high-performance FPGAs can incorporate Mercury's IP to create devices with a robust Serial RapidIO endpoint for a variety of applications. Mercury's IP has been successfully integrated into multiple Xilinx components with either an internal or external SERDES device, and can also be used to create multi-port switches to aggregate other Serial RapidIO inputs. Xilinx high-performance MGTs (Multi-Gigabit Transceivers) offer core interface speeds of 4x3.125 Gbits/s, the highest available in the RapidIO standard. For more information on Mercury Serial RapidIO IP core features, specifications, and benefits, visit its Web site.