Pentek Triples Number of Cobalt High-Performance Xilinx Virtex®-6 FPGA Modules for Radar and Communication Applications

Upper Saddle River, NJ, September 30, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Pentek, Inc., today announced a major expansion of its popular Cobalt™ family of data acquisition modules for high-performance applications. With the release of four new XMC and four new PCI Express (PCIe) modules, the company has tripled the number of Cobalt boards while extending the sampling frequency range to 1 GHz and adding key software radio functions. All Cobalt modules utilize the industry’s most advanced FPGA technology − Xilinx’s Virtex®-6 FPGA family − for on-board signal processing.

“It’s been less than a year since the first member of the Cobalt family set the standard for high-performance data conversion modules,” noted Rodger Hosking, vice president of Pentek. “With these new additions, we now offer a full range of choices for data conversion frequencies and channel counts in both turnkey and customizable versions,” he concluded.

All Cobalt family members are available in both XMC and PCIe formats to satisfy a range of system needs. The 71xxx series includes ruggedized XMC-format modules with extended temperature range options for deployed applications such as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) collecting radar and signal intelligence data. The 78xxx series uses the commercial PCIe format for use in desktop PCs and blade servers for R&D and laboratory environments.

“The Virtex-6 FPGA family offers previously unattainable DSP performance levels to handle the toughest real-time signal processing tasks due to its advanced DSP48E1 slices,” said Xilinx senior manager, Platform Solutions, Raj Seelam. “Pentek’s Cobalt family delivers a large variety of Virtex-6 FPGA-based products, allowing customers to optimize their FPGA-based applications with the performance and I/O choices they need.”

Each module features a Xilinx Virtex-6 LXT or SXT FPGA fully connected to all data and control paths. The FPGAs contain factory-installed functions including data multiplexing, channel selection, data packing, gating, triggering, time stamping, and memory control with additional capacity for user-defined functions. The modules support a range of Virtex-6 devices, allowing customers to choose the device density that best fits their requirements.

For access to the full release, photo and data sheets, please visit: http://www.pentek.com/whatsnew/viewrelease.cfm?index=147

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