AMD has added three new chips to its Versal Prime series lineup, which is designed for space-constrained applications.
AMD began shipping the first production units of the Versal Prime Gen2 Series last year. Two devices have entered full production, and a third is currently sampling. These new devices are designed to provide an optimized footprint and processing subsystem compared to the earlier models.
Versal is AMD’s own platform, not x86 or FPGA. The Versal Prime Series Gen 2 devices combine high-performance embedded CPUs with programmable logic, video encode/decode IP, and support for DDR5 & LPDDR5X. These devices are built with scalability in mind, and target markets include pro AV, broadcast, and industrial IoT.
Additionally, the new devices use a common footprint, enabling designers to build a single hardware platform that supports a full range of devices, simplifying development and maximizing utilization.
AMD claims these devices can deliver up to 5x scalar compute compared to existing AMD adaptive SoCs.
Versal Prime is considered a system on a chip (SoC) design, and AMD isn’t kidding. Its processor subsystem consists of a quad-core Arm Cortex-A78AE APU, a six-core Arm Cortex-R52 real-time processor, an integrated single-core Arm Mali-G78AE GPU, a video Codec unit, and 1 MB on-chip memory with ECC.
It comes with DDR5 memory controllers at up to 6400 Mb/s and LPDDR5X up to 8533 Mb/s with maximum bandwidth of 102 GB/s. It features a 2x 100Gbps multirate Ethernet MAC on the die for 10Gbps Ethernet and 1Gbps Ethernet.
The combination of Cortex-A78AE and Cortex-R52 cores helps these SoCs handle a variety of different complex tasks more easily. It allows customers to strike a balance of performance, power, and size in each of their products, while maximizing software and IP reuse.
On the software side, AMD provides Vivado for RTL design (Verilog/VHDL) and Vitis for building software on the Arm Cortex-A78/R52 processor cores. AMD also provides the Embedded Development Framework (EDF) based on Yocto, and includes ready Linux images, drivers for video, GPU, and fast memory.
The Versal Prime Series Gen 2 2VM3654 and 2VM3454 adaptive SoCs will start sampling later this year, and early access design tools for the Versal 2VM3654 are available now.