The Spartan-3 family of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays from Xilinx Automotive (XA) satisfies the requirements of high-volume, budget-conscious automotive electronic applications. The five-member family offers system gate densities between 50,000 and 1.5 million.
XA devices are approved to the widely used AEC-Q100 standard and are offered in extended-temperature Q-grade (-40°C to +125°C TJ) and I-grade (-40°C to +100°C TJ). The XA Spartan-3 family expands upon the success of the prior XA Spartan-IIE family by enhancing clock management functions and increasing the quantity of logic resources, internal RAM capacity, total number of I/Os, and overall level of performance. These Spartan-3 enhancements, combined with advanced process technology, deliver more functionality and bandwidth per dollar than was previously possible, setting new standards in the programmable logic industry.
Spartan-3 FPGAs are ideally suited for a wide range of innovative automotive electronics modules and systems, from the newest driver assistance and entertainment systems to instrument clusters and gateways, thanks to their remarkably low cost. A flexible substitute for ASICs, ASSPs, and microcontrollers is the Spartan-3 series. With FPGAs, these issues with expensive initial NREs, protracted development cycles, and obsolescence are avoided. Moreover, FPGA programmability enables design updates in the field without the need for new hardware.
