Zynq UltraScale+ SoM with up to 12GB RAM targets LiDAR applications

iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G30M is a system-on-module (SoM) based on AMD Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU4/ZU5/ZU7 FPGA MPSoC specially geared towards LiDAR applications for scientific and military applications.

The module comes with up to 12GB of RAM, 4GB for the programmable logic (PL) and 8GB for the Arm Cortex-A53/R5-based Processing System (PS), two 240-pin high-density, high-speed connectors with 142 user I/Os, 16x GTH transceivers up to 16.3Gbps, and four GTR transceivers up to 6Gbps.

iW-RainboW-G30M specifications:

FPGA MPSoC – AMD Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ ZU4, ZU5, or ZU7 MPSoC with Processing System (PS) featuring 2x or 4x Arm Cortex-A53 core @ 1.5 GHz, two Cortex-R5 cores @ 600MHz,
H.264/H.265 Video Encoder/Decoder (VCU), ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU @ 677MHz, and Programming Logic (PL)/FPGA with up to 504K Logic cells & 230K LUTs
System Memory
- 4GB DDR4 64-bit RAM with ECC for PS (upgradeable up to 8GB)
- 2GB DDR4 16-bit RAM for PL (upgradeable up to 4GB)
Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash (upgradeable)
Networking – RGMII Ethernet PHY Transceiver
USB – USB 2.0 ULPI transceiver
2x 240-pin board-to-board connectors
- From PS Block
  - Storage – 4-bit SD interface
  - Networking – 1x Gigabit Ethernet using the PHY on the SoM, 1x RGMII interface (multiplexed with ULPI)
  - USB – 1x USB 2.0 OTG port
  - Optional ULPI Interface
  - 2x PS-GTR high-speed transceivers up to 6 Gbps
  - Low-speed I/Os – 1x SPI, 2x CAN bus, 1x UART, 2x I2C
  - Debugging – Debug UART, PS JTAG
- From PL Block
  - 16x PL-GTH high-speed transceivers up to 16.3 Gbps
  - I/Os – 142 IOs
    - HP Bank IOs – Up to 48x LVDS IOs/96x single-ended (SE)
    - HD Bank IOs – Up to 23x LVDS IOs/46x single-ended (SE)
    - GC Global Clock Input pins – Up to 15x LVDS/SE
    - ADC Input pins – Up to 16x differential/single-ended
Power Input – 5V through B2B Connector
Dimensions – 95 x 75 mm
Temperature Range – -40°C to +85°C
Compliance – CE (pending), RoHS & REACH

iWave Systems provide a Linux BSP with Petalinux and Vivado Design Suite 2020.1, as well as a bare-metal BSP with Vivado 2020.1 only. There’s also a hardware development kit named the iW-RainboW-G30D with an SFP+ cage for 10Gbps Ethernet, dual Gigabit Ethernet, a DisplayPort connector, HD BNC connectors for video in and out, a PCIe Gen2 x4 slot, two FMC high-pin count (HPC) connectors, two PMOD connector, and more.

The company claims Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC devices are well-suited to deliver advanced capabilities to LiDAR sensors such as signal processing, point cloud pre-processing, and point cloud machine learning acceleration. iWave also highlights the power efficiency of the AMD Xilinx chips which can be critical for many applications using LiDAR’s such as autonomous vehicles or avionic applications.

The iW-RainboW-G30M system-on-module and development kit appear to be available now for an undisclosed price, and iWave Systems promises a 10+ years life cycle for the module. Additional information may be found on the product page.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.