Reconfigurable system nears rollout

Electronic News, July 15, 1996 by Peter Brown

Sausalito, Calif.--Metalithic Systems Inc. (MSI), based here, is preparing to roll out next month what it claims will be the industry's first commercially marketable reconfigurable computing system--in this case using Xilinx field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

In a related event, Xilinx revealed at the Xilinx/Cornell University reconfigurable computing conference, held in Ithaca, N.Y., last week that it will be shipping its previously-introduced XC6200 field programmable gate array (FPGA) reconfigurable programmable logic family in 3Q96.

Metalithic's system, dubbed Digital Wings for Audio, will use reconfigurable logic to create a hard disk recording system for PCs, said Kent Gilson, CEO and founder of MSI. The MSI system will be targeted at professional musicians and sound recording studios. "We are going after the price/performance customers that want high quality digital audio products at a low price," said Mr. Gilson.

MSI is a privately owned company that was founded in 1992 to commercialize reconfigurable computing on-the-fly to meet the need of desired applications. Digital Wings for Audio will be MSI's first product.

Digital Wings for Audio uses two Xilinx 3190 series FPGAs that can be reconfigured on the same piece of silicon, said Daryl Eigen, CEO of MSI.

"Instead of using 15 separate pieces of silicon to do 15 separate jobs," said Mr. Eigen "we have taken two Xilinx chips and reconfigured them 15 times." According to Mr. Eigen the company went through more than 100 different changes to the silicon when creating Digital Wings for Audio before the company found the design that worked best.

The term reconfigurable computing refers to the use of reconfigurable chips in a system, allowing the device to be reprogrammed on-the-fly in real-time to perform multiple functions that normally would require an individual chip for each function.

"Metalithic fills a niche that no one has tried to fill," said Murray Disman, head of Information Associates and editor/publisher of the Programmable Logic News & Views newsletter. "It is a complete reconfigurable package that includes the board, software and break-out box. It is a top-to-bottom package based on reconfigurable computing."

The system will feature 128 real-time tracks with simultaneous playback all in waveform sound, said Mr. Gilson. The system offers MIDI-like sound but in a wave-format designed to save disk space, he added. The system is said by the company to work with current generation hard drives, to minimize space and run under Windows 95 as well as perform editing functions with current software music tools.

Digital Wings for Audio is currently in beta testing and is expected to be available in August priced at approximately $2,000. Mr. Eigen said this is price competitive compared to $4,000 for most home studio products. A consumer version of Digital Wings for Audio is also in the works for the future, Mr. Eigen revealed.

The XC6200 family, internally code-named "Excalibur," and originally introduced last year (EN, June 26, 1995), was touted at the conference in Ithaca as the first Xilinx FPGA line specifically designed for partially and fully reconfigurable applications. Xilinx said it expects the reconfigurable systems market to grow to more than $1 billion in sales by the end of the decade with the FPGA chip portion estimated at approximately $200 million.

The XC6200 will feature a higher gate count than any previous Xilinx device--up into the range of 100,000 gates--keeping pace with Altera's 100,000 gate EPF10K100 programmable logic device (PLD) introduced earlier this year (EN, April 22).

"With the advent of reconfigurable devices we are able to combine the best of both worlds, the speed of a logic implementation with reprogrammablity," said Brent Dichter, Xilinx director of strategic marketing. "Compare this to a gate array where it is fixed in silicon--unchangeable. This is a highly useful device."

The XC6200 family features an MPU interface allowing it to link to multiple CPUs, such as Advanced Micro Devices' 29000, Texas Instruments' TMS320 digital signal processor and Intel's 960 embedded controller.

Meanwhile, the reconfigurable conference at Cornell University featured representatives from more than 25 universities around the world, allowing professors and students to receive hands-on experience in reconfigurable computing.

Dr. Geoffery Brown, professor of electrical engineering at Cornell University, commented, "What we are seeing is we have had this high level language and compiler and just now with this reconfigurable technology we are at a point where it is working."

Dr. Peter Athanas, professor of electrical engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, said he sees reconfigurable computing as the gap that bridges FPGAs into the application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) share of the programmable logic market.

"FPGAs have been stuck behind microprocessors and ASICs," Dr. Athanas said. "Reconfigurable computing provides a mechanism to reverse that order a little bit by rapidly changing things and essentially building structures that are more efficient."