Professional-Grade Board Designed and Built with Top Chipmaker Microsemi
Arrow Electronics, Inc.and Microsemi Corporation announced the latest addition to Arrow’s growing portfolio of development tools: the Arrow-built SF2+ Development Kit, featuring Microsemi’s SmartFusion™2 system-on-a-chip (SoC) field-programmable gate array (FPGA), Microsemi’s Timberwolf™ audio processor and Microsemi’s LX series power devices. The SF2+ Development Kit is ideal for both software and hardware engineers looking to jumpstart next-level integrated designs.
“The SF2+ is a full-feature hardware development kit that enables software and hardware engineers to reduce not only the area of their board, but also the cost and complexity of working with multiple sensors and interfaces,” said Chakib Loucif, vice president of engineering at Arrow Electronics. “The SF2+ kit is a great addition to Arrow’s growing portfolio of development tools.”
Arrow collaborated with top semiconductor and system solutions provider Microsemi to design and build the SF2+. Microsemi’s SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs are ideal for implementing a wide array of functions like PCIe Gen2 control plane, image processing, I/O expansion and bridging. They also address fundamental requirements for advanced security, high reliability and low power in industrial, military, aviation, communications and medical applications. Additionally, SmartFusion2 devices integrate an inherently reliable flash-based FPGA fabric, a 166 MHz ARM® CortexTM-M3 processor, advanced security processing accelerators, DSP blocks, SRAM, eNVM and industry-required high performance serial communication interfaces—all on a single chip.
“Customers appreciate that Microsemi has produced the fullest featured low-density FPGA family on the market,” said Ted Marena, director of SoC marketing at Microsemi. “The SF2+ Development Kit is an excellent platform for customers to begin the implementation of their own design.”
The Microsemi Timberwolf audio processor is ideal for today’s growing need of low-power, hands-free communications in security camera, communications and connected home applications. The field upgradable firmware enables far field microphone, beam forming, sound location estimation, Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC), noise reduction and a variety of other voice enhancements to deliver clear voice quality in harsh environments.
Microsemi’s LX7186A, an efficient switching regulator, and its LX8213, a low-power, fast-responding LDO, provide the SF2+ Development Kit with all of the power necessary for a variety of applications.
The SF2+ Development Kit also features Emcraft Systems’ SmartFusion2 system-on-module (SOM), along with Micron memory and Samtec connectors to help evaluate Microsemi’s Timberwolf audio processor and an array of Adruino compatible shields.
Arrow is hosting a series of workshops in 2016 to demonstrate how to optimize design performance and accelerate development time with the SF2+. Attendees will receive in-depth technical training on the SmartFusion2 SoC FPGA and step-by-step instructions on design techniques and board use. The $75 registration fee includes one SF2+ Development Kit and two ST Micro X-NUCLEO boards: the ST Micro MEMS and environmental sensor evaluation board and the ST Micro Bluetooth Low Energy evaluation board. Workshops launch in North America on January 12, 2016. For more information and to register, please visit http://eventrebels.com/sf2plus
