To help reduce overall cost NEC Display Solutions has adopted the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA family for three models of its DLP Cinema projectors including the NC3200S for screen sizes up to 32 meters in width the NC2000C (20 meters) and NC1200C (12 meters) with capability for the recent fast-growing 3D content. The three models are capable of projecting all existing 3D video content. The company has started shipments in stages. According to NEC the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA family reduces the design cost of peripheral devices by providing interfaces for all required standards plus serializer-deserializer in a single chip. Thus the Virtex-5 FPGA helps reduce overall system costs while enabling advanced performance including communication via a high-speed Ethernet interface. NEC Display Solutions is active in the digital cinema business in Japan and overseas with DLP Cinema projectors as our core products says Atsushi Kuroda head of projector development at NEC Display Solutions. Sophisticated performance is required of projectors in this market segment but since they are not mass-produced like consumer electronics products we considered using FPGAs instead of ASICs right from the start to achieve superior performance while keeping development costs down. A major factor that led us to select Xilinx FPGAs is that they offer a range of high-speed interfaces on a single chip making superior performance possible at low cost. We are delighted to be able to contribute toward 3D technology in the movie business as a result of NEC Display Solutions selecting Virtex-5 for its DLP Cinema projectors says Sam Rogan president and representative director of Xilinx K.K. The Virtex-5 family has been highly rated in the industry with sales exceeding $100 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2010—a record figure for an FPGA product. Xilinx FPGAs offer a number of features that customers require on a single chip and a platform that integrates development environments allowing customers to concentrate on differentiating their products. Xilinx www.xilinx.com
