Advanced Evaluation/Development Modules for USB 3.1 Technology

To complement its FT602 USB 3.1 (Gen 1) video class FIFO IC, which has now gone into full scale production, FTDI Chip has introduced a pair of accompanying hardware modules.

The UMFT602A and UMFT602X units enable bridging of a FIFO bus to a USB3.0/1 host and are equipped with either HSMC or FMC (LPC) connectors. They provide engineers with a simple and straight forward platform on which to evaluate the functionality of the 32-bit FT602 devices, which can deliver up to 1920×1080 resolution at frame rates of 60fps, with up to 4 video input channels being made available. This should prove particular beneficial in relation to high performance multimedia applications, like streaming of video content captured by HD camera systems.

The UMFT602A/X both incorporate 2 parallel slave FIFO bus protocols – a multi-channel FIFO and a 245 synchronous FIFO. Through their respective integrated FT602 ICs, these modules support USB 3.1 Super Speed (5Gbits/s) as well as USB 2.0 Hi-Speed (480Mbit/s) data transfer rates.

They are also capable of delivering data burst rates of up to 400MBytes/s across a 32-bit parallel interface. The UMFT602X has a 70x60mm form factor, while the UMFT602A has dimensions of 78.7x60mm. The design of these modules has been approached in such a way that they can plug directly into the majority of FPGA development platforms on the market, supplied by leading programmable logic vendors like Xilinx and Altera. As daughter cards, the UMFT602A/X units will operate with a FIFO master board which has either a HSMC or FMC connectivity.