AMD’s Versal Collection of system-on-chip units have gained notoriety within the trade for his or her distinctive mixture of GPU, Arm core processors, AI engines, DSP engines, FPGA programmable logic, and extra, all inside a single die. With a number of computing architectures out there with in the identical chip, AMD’s concept is that the Versal chips will have the ability to meet the extraordinarily low latency calls for of business automation functions the place absolutely the newest knowledge from sensors is crucial to the system’s total performance.
There are 5 completely different variations of the Versal chip in AMD’s portfolio that every concentrate on a special constraint that customers would possibly encounter of their functions. The Edge AI collection of Versal chips particularly focuses on optimized efficiency for energy and thermal constrained functions with essentially the most optimized efficiency on the bottom energy enter.
Since edge units are extraordinarily frequent today within the deployment of AI fashions, I’ve been stunned on the pretty slim choice of improvement boards for the Versal Edge AI chips. Which is why Trenz Digital’s announcement of their new Versal Edge AI Evalboard, the TE0950, caught my consideration.
The TE0950 is an AMD Versal AI Edge Evalboard with VE2302 system with 8 GB DDR4 SDRAM, 128 MB SPI Flash or MicroSD card for major boot choices, 32 GB eMMC as secondary boot possibility, 32 MB SPI Flash, EEPROM with MAC-address, zQSFP cage with 4 GTYP Transceiver, 2x CRUVI HS and 2x CRUVI LS connectors for enlargement, CSI-2 connector for cameras, and FMC with 4 GTYP Transceiver and 34 LA differential pairs.
One other fascinating possibility on the TE0950 is that it additionally has a Artix 7 FPGA on it to make use of as a configurable level-shifter/MUX for FMC and different 3.3 V I/Os. Provided that it has direct routing to the FMC connector and CRUVI HS connectors, there are infinite choices for using the additional logic for extra than simply stage shifting. It might be applied as a system controller as effectively.
As I beforehand talked about, I’ve solely seen three different improvement boards for the Edge AI Versal chip. Two of these three use the identical mid-range VE2302 Edge AI Versal chip that the TE0950 makes use of (the iW-RainboW-G57D from iWave Techniques and VD100 from Alinx), whereas the third (the VEK280 Analysis Package from AMD) makes use of the highest finish VEK280 Edge AI Versal chip.
For sure, the TE0950 is a fraction of the worth of the VEK280 Analysis Package as a result of distinction in Versal chip at $810 vs $6995. There’s a very massive hole between the specs of the VE2302 and VEK280 (orders of magnitude nearly throughout the board), however once more that stems from the goal use case of the VE2302 being optimized for energy and thermal constrained functions whereas the VEK280 is optimized for the height efficiency doable.
The iW-RainboW-G57D from iWave Techniques sits at a price-point of round $1800 and implements the VE2302 Versal as a system-on-module (SoM). It doesn’t have an extra controller chip just like the Artix on the TE0950, however it does have HDMI and SDI connectors that the TE0950 doesn’t have.
The VD100 from Alinx is one other SoM implementation of the VE2302 chip at a price-point of $800, once more it doesn’t have an extra controller chip just like the Artix on the TE0950, however it has a PCIE 3.0 interface.
Total, the TE0950 fills a niche available in the market for Edge AI Versal chips being on the decrease finish of the price spectrum whereas providing peripherals not discovered on different improvement boards presently out there.
Trenz Digital can be excellent about preserving documentation for his or her boards up-to-date (see the TE0950 TRM right here), in addition to offering good reference designs to assist customers get began.
At present the TE0950 is accessible to order on Trenz’s web site, however is exhibiting a present ship date of June twenty first, 2024.
