expressXG^™ Framework Lite

Overview

The expressXG^™ Framework Lite is an FPGA development framework that enables customers to rapidly create and deploy high-bandwidth applications on a broad range of AdvancedIO's platforms. With advancements in silicon technology, FPGAs today offer an unmatched capability for providing optimized solutions to the challenging problems encountered in high-bandwidth, real-time packet and signal processing applications, such as network monitoring and situational awareness. However, programming FPGAs typically requires more effort and a specialized skill-set than that required to create software for single or multi-core processors. In addition, significant effort investment is required to learn the documented and undocumented nuances of implementing viable Ethernet communications using FPGAs, especially at very high speeds. These characteristics may increase FPGAs' perceived risk and implementation timeframes, causing some project managers and teams to avoid using them and instead settle for sub-optimal software implementations. Choosing expressXG Framework Lite not only alleviates these concerns, but also provides an exceptional performance-to-cost ratio for high-bandwidth FPGA applications saving thousands of dollars in third-party IP cores integration and licensing fees.

Conceptually, the expressXG Framework Lite consists of an interface wrapper and user sandbox. The wrapper provides a simple and robust user interface to various high-performance controllers, such as the 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller and SDRAM controller. The sandbox is a structural guideline, with sample applications and debugging capabilities, that significantly simplifies and accelerates application coding and integration.

Quickly Integrate DPI Algorithms onto FPGAs

AdvancedIO's expressXG Framework Lite is ideally suited for government customers who want to rapidly implement their own DPI algorithms onto FPGAs while mitigating many of the associated risks. The framework abstracts underlying hardware interfaces and 10 Gigabit Ethernet communications protocol functions, so developers can focus 100-percent of their time on application development and integration. Using the expressXG Framework Lite environment ensures application portability among FPGA device families on AdvancedIO's platforms, which reduces the costs of future migration or upgrade cycles significantly. Importantly, all in-house development efforts are preserved and kept confidential.

Upgrade from expressXG Framework Lite to Full Version

The expressXG Framework provides an array of system management configuration, and programming capabilities designed to meet the needs of today's complex high-bandwidth network situational awareness applications. The framework's innovative architecture integrated with AdvancedIO's deep packet inspection line-speed technology provides a groundbreaking combination of application simplicity, performance and scalability across platforms.

The lite version provides the necessary infrastructure to quickly begin developing DPI functionality on FPGAs. Customers may upgrade to the full version to benefit from its rich software capabilities, such as device drivers, high level APIs, and communication protocol-specific application modules, or may choose to create their own compatible host software.

Jump-start FPGA Development "Right Out of the Box"

To ensure rapid integration of user application code, expressXG Framework Lite provides an innovative user sandbox region containing sample applications that demonstrate the functionality of various interfaces. The interface wrapper is provided in a synthesized netlist format. A Verilog source file is provided for the top-level design, which instantiates the interface wrapper and user application. The top-level file is also supported in VHDL.

Benefits

Features

Applications