Xcell Journal: The authoritative journal for programmable ... - Xilinx

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EMBEDDED SYSTEMS Sign of the Times Xilinx makes high-tech outdoor advertising in Times Square possible. by Jason Daughenbaugh Sr. Design Engineer Advanced Electronic Designs, Inc. jason.daughenbaugh@aedmt.com New York City’s Times Square is known as the “Crossroads of the World.” Approximately 1.5 million people pass through the intersection of Broadway and 42nd Street every day, and millions more see the area daily on television broadcasts. No better place for outdoor advertising exists. As a result, dazzling signs have become a Times Square trademark. Every advertiser wants to have the best advertising medium possible, so new signs must use the latest technology. Times Square tenants rely on MultiMedia, which manufactures the majority of the spectacular signs in Times Square. When MultiMedia asked our company, Advanced Electronic Designs, Inc. (AED), to design an LED sign for JPMorgan Chase in Times Square, we needed a huge amount of signal processing, data distribution, and interfacing. We also needed to design the sign very quickly. We met this challenge by utilizing the advantages of Xilinx ® components. We used Virtex-II XC2V1000 FPGAs for video processing, and for control and distribution we chose low-cost Spartan-3 XC3S200 FPGAs. To configure the FPGAs, we chose the Platform Flash XCF00 configuration PROM family. And for final distribution of the data on the 3800 LED blocks, we used XC9572XL PLDs. 10 Xcell Journal Winter 2004
The Design An LED sign is like a large computer monitor; video data goes in and is displayed on the sign. The sign comprises red, green, and blue LEDs that turn on and off (pulsewidth modulation) to generate more than four trillion colors. What made this particular design a challenge was the scale, both in terms of physical size as well as the amount of data and the transfer rates involved. The sign is 135 feet long and 26 feet tall. With nearly two million pixels, it is the highest definition LED display in the world. This is ten times the resolution of the average television screen and twice the resolution of topof-the-line HDTV sets. After considering our options, designing with Xilinx programmable logic was the obvious choice. The high-performance, low-cost FPGAs are well suited for all three main components of this design: video processing, data distribution, and sign control. Video Processing The video processor accepts a variety of video inputs. It captures these video streams as 36 bit RGB (12 bits per color). It then crops and places these inputs onto a master sign image for display. Color-space conversion adjusts image characteristics such as color temperature and balance. Additional processing corrects for individual LED differences. We also use proprietary image processing algorithms to operate the LEDs efficiently while maintaining optimal image quality. Data Distribution Video data starts in a control room and ends at the LEDs. The first step is the video processor, which is located in the control room. The video processor breaks the images into manageable chunks to send to the many modules of the sign so that each LED displays the data for the corresponding pixel. More than 3 Gbps of video data alone is required to operate the LEDs. In addition to video data, we also transfer a Figure 1 – The world’s highest resolution LED display is based on Xilinx devices. Figure 2 – The sign is built out of 3,800 display blocks. variety of control and status functions. Not wanting to re-invent the wheel, we chose Ethernet as our data distribution medium. Our video processor has multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports that interface to the sign. Gigabit Ethernet can be transferred over fiber-optic cable, EMBEDDED SYSTEMS allowing great distances between the controller and the sign itself. We were able to use off-the-shelf switches to distribute the data within the sign and put inexpensive 10/100 Ethernet ports on the individual distribution boards. The availability of Ethernet protocol analyzers, such as the open-source project Ethereal, allowed us to easily analyze and debug the system. Sign Control In advertising, time is money; thus it is crucial to monitor the sign at all times. The control system monitors temperatures throughout the sign to ensure that adequate cooling is present. Voltages are monitored to detect malfunctioning power supplies. The control system maintains error and resend counts to detect faulty data links. It also provides an interface to upgrade the FPGAs remotely for enhancements and bug fixes. Winter 2004 Xcell Journal 11
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 51, WINTER 2004 XCELL JOURNAL
Page 3 and 4: EDITOR IN CHIEF Carlis Collins edit
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Figure 1 - The Virtex-4 FPGA offers
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y Daniel E. Michek Staff Field Appl
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same address location, thus increas
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typical application is the digital
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The Memec P160 Analog Module is a d
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X-ray X-ray vision vision for for y
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provides more than enough processin
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PPC. This FIFO allows the relativel
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I would like to see Xilinx System G
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Early Access: The Designer’s Edge
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Agilent Signal 250 Khz - 3Ghz Agile
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We picked [9 Xilinx Virtex-II Pro d
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LIN Bus - A Cost-Effective Alternat
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Automotive Cost Speed Network Per N
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Education Services Trims Your Learn
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Board of Education The UNM FPGA pro
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FPGAs Ensure Flexible and Adaptable
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System Communications Developing ap
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Forthcoming developments in future
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Why Prototype? The complexity assoc
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Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs http://www.xi
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TI Power Solutions: Power Behind Yo
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