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Maximum system frequency on FPGA/CPLD

Started by Raymond February 1, 2006
Hi There.

Xilinx CPLD XCR3384XL with speed grade -7 have (according to the
datasheet) a maximum clock frequency at 135MHz. How have they found
that number?

I have some timing problems on a FPGA and that trigged my curiousity.
(I am assuming that they use a likewise method to find the maximum
clock frequency in CPLDs and FPGAs, (but I'm not sure)).


Raymond

Raymond wrote:

> Hi There. > > Xilinx CPLD XCR3384XL with speed grade -7 have (according to the > datasheet) a maximum clock frequency at 135MHz. How have they found > that number? > > I have some timing problems on a FPGA and that trigged my curiousity. > (I am assuming that they use a likewise method to find the maximum > clock frequency in CPLDs and FPGAs, (but I'm not sure)).
That only allies to trivial functionality. Note that as soon as you ahve some synchroneous counters or so, this maximum frequency comes down considerably. Rene -- Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com & commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net
In CPLDs the most usual way to calculate this was taking the output of a 
flip-flop in one macrocell to the input of a flip-flop in another macrocell 
running in a simple non-extended p-term mode. Some vendors will give a 
frequency between macrocells in the same block but more often than not the 
system figure is between 2 macrocells in effectively different blocks (worst 
case no extra p-terms). Some of the newer CPLD technologies may blurr this 
defination if I have not already lost you this defination.

FPGAs are not so simple. Some years ago Xilinx talked about a 1GHz counter 
running but certainly wasn't system frequency. The different vendors do put 
different biases on their numbers so my personal defination for SRAM type 
architectures is the speed for an average design with about 3 levels of lut 
logic average. Very roughly Spartan-3 gets about 150Mhz on my metric a 
Spartan-2 goes above 100MHz etc. The thing is with FPGAs a lot of factors 
can vary the frequency reached not least the luck, or maybe it's skill, of 
the designer.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of UAP. Cheaper Boards for Students and Universities.
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk


"Raymond" <raybakk@yahoo.no> wrote in message 
news:1138806283.645748.153140@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
> Hi There. > > Xilinx CPLD XCR3384XL with speed grade -7 have (according to the > datasheet) a maximum clock frequency at 135MHz. How have they found > that number? > > I have some timing problems on a FPGA and that trigged my curiousity. > (I am assuming that they use a likewise method to find the maximum > clock frequency in CPLDs and FPGAs, (but I'm not sure)). > > > Raymond >
Raymond wrote:

> Hi There. > > Xilinx CPLD XCR3384XL with speed grade -7 have (according to the > datasheet) a maximum clock frequency at 135MHz. How have they found > that number? > > I have some timing problems on a FPGA and that trigged my curiousity. > (I am assuming that they use a likewise method to find the maximum > clock frequency in CPLDs and FPGAs, (but I'm not sure)). > > > Raymond >
This the maximal frequency of a shift-register ! Regards, Laurent www.amontec.com