Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA adopted into Fiat's telematics system

Xilinx Inc. announced that its Spartan-3 FPGA devices have been used in the development and delivery of a telematics system that will be integrated into every Fiat vehicle. Based upon a reference design that they defined with Fiat Auto, Microsoft's automotive business unit collaborated with Xilinx, Samsung, ScanSoft, Siemens, SiRF and Magneti-Marelli to develop the solution with each company contributing to key aspects of the system including chipset, processor, telecommunications module, speech engine and hardware development.

The Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA is used as a companion to a Samsung processor to implement the mobile application processor within the platform. It lowers the system bill of material (BOM) costs through the integration of several functions, including two UARTs (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitters), a volume controller, a noise suppression filter, echo cancellation, decimetres, and scalers, which would otherwise require discrete devices. In addition, Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGAs are fully programmable so updates can be made to the hardware even after deployment to the field.

Aside from the Spartan-3 family of FPGAs, Xilinx offers a complete line of temperature-tolerant devices designed specifically for the automotive industry.