Making your products and subsystems competitive in performance, features, and cost requires constant awareness of new leading-edge programmable technologies. Making your designing as productive as possible requires steady learning of leading application solutions, tools, and techniques.

Beginning this October (see Table 1), Programmable World 2004 brings together thousands of engineers and system architects for an action-packed day of learning and networking around the most exciting new programmable technology in the world: the Virtex-4™ solution from Xilinx®.

Last year’s Programmable World 2003 workshops packed new technical content from the vast Xilinx® partner ecosystem and its leading expert users into a highly productive day-long training event in 20 cities around the world. Xilinx and fellow industry leaders such as Agilent™, IBM™, Intel™, The MathWorks, Mentor Graphics®, Texas Instruments™, and Wind River™ led engineers through workshop tracks covering DSP, embedded processing, high-speed connectivity, and system logic design. Workshop attendees received a 556-page workbook filled with direction on key solutions to the most pressing design and verification issues facing hardware engineers, ASIC designers, system engineers and architects, and embedded software developers in getting products to market quickly and competitively. At Programmable World 2004, Xilinx and its partners will showcase the new Virtex-4™ solution in each of four digital “domains” – DSP, processor, connectivity, and logic – with a full-day track dedicated to each. DSP Track Learn about the amazing price reductions, power improvements, and performance acceleration that Virtex-4 solutions will bring to your video and digital communications applications and algorithms. See the latest enhancements to the industry’s easiest end-to-end tool flow for designing, verifying, and debugging, from design entry in MathWorks tools to real-time Xilinx hardware in-the-loop. This track will include reference designs and other real-life examples to help you get the most out of your communications and video designs.

Table 1 – Programmable World 2004 schedule Programmable World 2004 Dates and Locations October 2004 Paris, France Munich, Germany Milan, Italy Stockholm, Sweden San Diego, California San Jose, California November 2004 Raleigh, North Carolina Dallas, Texas Boston, Massachusetts Baltimore, Maryland Orlando, Florida Chicago, Illinois Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Shanghai, China Shenzhen, China Hsinchu, Taiwan Seoul, Korea Yokohama, Japan Osaka, Japan December 2004 Tel Aviv, Israel

Last year’s Programmable World 2003 workshops packed new technical content from the vast Xilinx® partner ecosystem and its leading expert users into a highly productive day-long training event in 20 cities around the world. Xilinx and fellow industry leaders such as Agilent™, IBM™, Intel™, The MathWorks, Mentor Graphics®, Texas Instruments™, and Wind River™ led engineers through workshop tracks covering DSP, embedded processing, high-speed connectivity, and system logic design.

Workshop attendees received a 556-page workbook filled with direction on key solutions to the most pressing design and verification issues facing hardware engineers, ASIC designers, system engineers and architects, and embedded software developers in getting products to market quickly and competitively.

At Programmable World 2004, Xilinx and its partners will showcase the new Virtex-4™ solution in each of four digital “domains” – DSP, processor, connectivity, and logic – with a full-day track dedicated to each.

DSP Track
Learn about the amazing price reductions, power improvements, and performance acceleration that Virtex-4 solutions will bring to your video and digital communications applications and algorithms. See the latest enhancements to the industry’s easiest end-to-end tool flow for designing, verifying, and debugging, from design entry in MathWorks tools to real-time Xilinx hardware in-the-loop.

This track will include reference designs and other real-life examples to help you get the most out of your communications and video designs.

Connectivity Track
Preview the newest high-speed serial technology that enables data rates as high as 11 Gbps with impeccable signal integrity chip-tochip, across backplanes and even box-to-box. Share techniques for minimizing error rates, board cost, and system cost for your connectivity applications. Anticipate and understand potential signal integrity issues early in your design cycle and apply the latest streamlined methodologies to proactively prevent signal integrity issues.

This track will cover the use of Xilinx RocketIO™ models in high-speed PCB simulations as well as analyzing and simulating GHz signal paths for via- and surface-mounted components in PCB design. You’ll see how signal integrity analysis is used to reduce overshoot, ringing, cross talk, timing margins, intersymbol interference, and radiated emissions. Instructors will show HSPICE™ correlation, eye diagrams, signal pre-emphasis, and S-parameter connector models using simulation tools. You’ll also work on predicting performance using a combination of electromagnetic field simulation and circuit and system simulation, and on optimization of interconnect and transitions used for high-performance PCB designs.

Processor Track
Walk through the comprehensive Virtex-4 embedded processing solution, from the PicoBlaze™ 8-bit microcontroller reference design, 32-bit MicroBlaze™ soft processor implementation, the enhanced onchip PowerPC™ processor, and the UltraController solution that uses the embedded PowerPC. Delve into design tools from Wind River, MontaVista Software™, and Mentor Graphics/ATI and learn about the latest Virtex-4 RTOS support.

Mix and match the latest combinations of:

• Virtex-4 silicon architecture
• 32-bit RISC processor cores and peripherals
• Third-party RTOS support
• Intelligent design tools
• Integrated hardware/software debug platforms
• Development boards
• Reference designs
• Board support packages
• Design services
• Technical support from Xilinx and industry-leading partners

Logic Track
See how the latest design and debug tools from Xilinx, Synplicity™, Mentor Graphics, and Agilent help leverage the blazing fast Virtex-4 logic fabric and features. Learn the latest design techniques for the fastest performance, shortest design times, and lowest project costs. Work through FPGA physical synthesis for highest quality of results; high-speed memory interface design using real-time debug to slash verification times; and bench-top testing to verify signals in real time.

You’ll experience much beyond the intensive workshop sessions at Programmable World 2004. Technical demos will show how Virtex-4 solutions and partner offerings can help you solve real-world engineering problems faster and easier.

“Ask the Experts” opportunities bring you together with leading technologists from Xilinx to discuss how their products, services, and applications support can address your specific architecture and engineering challenges. Interactive networking sessions will allow you to share best practices and trends with other engineers and architects.

Conclusion
Programmable World 2004 packs hundreds of new programmable digital innovations and techniques into a single day of intense learning that you will not want to miss. For more information, or to register for the Programmable World workshop in a location near you, visit www.xilinx.com/pw2004/.

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