WP453 (v1.0) July 13, 2014 www.xilinx.com 1
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Xilinx and its Alliance partner Sensor to Image have created
hardware, software, IP, and whole turn-key system solutions
for the growing high-performance Machine Vision market.
White Paper: 7 Series FPGAs, Zynq SoCs
WP453 (v1.0) July 13, 2014
High-Performance Machine Vision
Systems Using Xilinx 7 Series Technology
By: Mark Timmons, Xilinx, Inc., and Werner Feith, Sensor to Image, GmbH
ABSTRACT
The Machine Vision market is experiencing unparalleled growth of pixel rates
in high-end vision systems. This accelerated growth, already exceeding the
Moore's Law trend to which semiconductor manufacturers and markets have
become accustomed over the years, presents an immediate and increasing
demand for high-performance connectivity that provides, with a minimal
number of cables, seamless support for 10G+ link speeds over distances in
the range of 100m.
This white paper examines the system requirements of such high-performance,
leading-edge technology, and highlights the universe of available
standards-compliant turnkey machine vision systems designed around the
Xilinx® 7 series FPGAs. Such Xilinx based turnkey designs are available today
from Xilinx's machine vision partner, Sensor to Image GmbH (S2I).
This white paper describes multiple Xilinx solutions for customers to consider,
fulfilling critical application requirements like reduced power consumption,
lower overall system cost, and easy scalability as system load requirements
eventually exceed their current trends.
The results of this creative collaboration of Xilinx and S2I provide
industry-leading, end-to-end solutions for prospective customers, including
camera- and frame-grabber hardware and solid, standards-compliant software
that address the exciting machine vision challenges emerging in today’s market.
WP453 (v1.0) July 13, 2014 www.xilinx.com 2
High-Performance Machine Vision Systems Using Xilinx 7 Series Technology
Introduction
Many new applications—for example, the quality measurement of large flat-panel displays—are
driving machine vision applications to require higher camera resolutions and higher frame rates to
meet volume production needs. Other applications with similar demands for high-resolution,
high-speed image capture include semiconductor wafer inspection, PCB inspection, postal and
parcel identification, and many others. The expansion of all such applications results in greatly
increased bandwidth demand.
As the need for machine vision is very wide — covering low-, mid-, and high-end systems —
the focus of this white paper is on applications that require link speeds of 10 Gb/s aggregate
bandwidth or greater. Designers of such systems must face highly challenging technological
obstacles, and the Xilinx 7 series (including the Zynq® All Programmable SoC platform) addresses
these challenges with powerful new technology. The scalable solutions discussed in this white
paper give the designer a robust system platform whose performance has been proven to handle
very high pixel rates over distances of up to 100m.
The three main aspects of overall system design were considered when creating the next
generation of technology for machine vision connectivity: cost, performance, and power
consumption (including remote powering and thermal considerations). The solutions detailed in
this white paper meet these needs, and also give the designer a high level of confidence in the
longevity of the solutions. Xilinx device families are known to have a long lifetime in the market,
that is, Xilinx products are typically available in excess of ten years from initial production to end of
life. Additionally, all the machine vision solutions presented here are implemented in compliance
with well-accepted communications standards.
With the introduction of the Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC family, designers can now support
10G+ connectivity technologies in an intelligent, programmable device that can run extensive,
high-performance machine vision software, such as HALCON from MVtec. A system can be
configured with the machine vision software in place and advanced imaging processing using the
programmable logic (PL) of the Zynq device to accelerate vision-based processing, and then couple
this capability to the high-performance ARM® dual Cortex���-A9 processing system (PS) within the
Zynq device. This combination of technology can be used in the following compact vision systems
application with Zynq devices:
• Embedded receiver with high-performance 10G+ connectivity
• Low-power, customizable, embedded platform with no need for a PC
• Long lifetime
• High efficiency programmable platform:
o Accelerated vision processing in the Zynq device’s PL
o High-performance serial processing up to 1 GHz in the Zynq device's PS