What you’ll learn:
- What is Direct RF?
- How Mercury Systems’ module integrates Direct RF support.
Direct RF technology like Intel’s Agilex 9 SoC FPGA Direct RF series is utilized in applications such as software-defined radio (SDR). These FPGAs integrate high-performance analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs) that minimize latency and improve bandwidth because they’re part of a multi-die package.
Direct RF is the term used to describe the integration of the ADC/DAC with the FPGA in a single package. It significantly reduces the footprint, but, more importantly, it provides much improved throughput. The multi-die approach, which offers better analog isolation, makes it possible to use the appropriate transistor and packaging technology for each die instead of trying to put everything onto a single die.
Brian Fitzgerald, Director of Engineering at Mercury Systems, showed me the company’s latest rugged, Direct RF FPGA solution. The DRF2580 module is designed to plug into VPX carrier boards (Fig. 1). It holds 16 GB of DDR4 SDRAM.
The Agilex FPGA includes four channels; a 64-Gsample/s, 10-bit ADC; and 64-Gsample/s, 10-bit DAC (Fig. 2). In addition, there’s a 1-Gb serial flash for FPGA configuration and power-management support. Also in the mix is a 1.5-GHz, quad-core, Arm Cortex-A53 compute complex, as well as eight single-ended GPIOs and 16 pairs of LVDS connections.
