Spansion MirrorBit Flash memory now available as Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA configuration solution

SUNNYVALE, USA: Spansion Inc. announced that the company's MirrorBit Flash memory is now available as a verified configuration solution for the new Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA family.

Spansion is offering a MirrorBit Multi-I/O Flash add-on module that is compatible with the Xilinx Spartan-6 evaluation and development kits, enabling designers to easily evaluate and test various configuration options. These combined solutions are available through Avnet Electronics Marketing and can be used to develop an array of consumer, infotainment, video and other cost and power-sensitive applications.

"Spansion is focused on providing customers with the right development tools, either from our own systems and software teams or through collaboration with partners, to provide enhanced customer support and greater levels of value," said Tom Eby, executive vice president, Embedded Solutions Group.

"By collaborating with Avnet and Xilinx to build a flexible, cost effective, easy-to-use system for a broad range of consumer and industrial applications, Spansion is helping designers and OEMs to innovate and quickly bring their products to market."

Spansion's MirrorBit NOR GL family is featured on Avnet's Spartan-6 LX150T FPGA development kit and the adaptor modules for Spansion's MirrorBit Multi-I/O serial Flash memory product are available for the Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA SP601, SP605 and Avnet LX16 evaluation kits. The configuration solutions are supported in the latest Xilinx ISE® Design Suite tools, simplifying bit stream generation and Flash programming.

"Spansion Flash memory is perfectly suited for the Spartan-6 configuration solution, enabling designers to easily demonstrate standard FPGA design flows and simplify application development," said Jim Beneke, vice president of global technical marketing at Avnet Electronics Marketing. "The flexibility and high performance of MirrorBit NOR solutions, with its universal footprint, for both parallel and serial Flash, enable added flexibility and rapid prototyping at lower costs in the development process for the customer."

Spansion MirrorBit Multi-I/O SPI family features the industry's fastest serial read performance in addition to leading Multi-I/O throughput performance of up to 40MB/sec (80MHz per I/O in quad I/O mode) that enables faster boot up times using FPGA configuration data. The MirrorBit Multi-I/O SPI family includes 32-megabits (Mb), 64 Mb and 128Mb devices with all three densities shipping in volume production today.

MirrorBit NOR GL products operate at 3.0 volts (Vcc), feature a random read speed of 90-100 nanoseconds (ns) access, and offer a page read speed of 25 ns via an 8-word page buffer. The MirrorBit NOR GL products include 32 Mb - 1 Gb, with all densities shipping in volume production today.

Flash memory is an integral part of the FPGA solution, providing a software-based ability to define the way transistors are connected, enabling flexibility and fine tuning even after the device is assembled into a customer's system. Flexibility and rapid development is always a key benefit when using an FPGA.

Spansion supports flexible design as well through a Universal Footprint, with consistent packaging and pin outs across multiple densities. Designers can swap devices at any point in the design or product life cycle without impacting board design.

Beyond compatibility with the Spartan-6 family, Spansion Flash memory can also be paired easily with high-performance FPGA's from the Xilinx Virtex®-6 platform for even more demanding applications.

The configuration solution and adaptor modules are now available through Avnet.