National Semiconductor has introduced the industry’s first triple-rate (3G/HD/SD) serial digital interface (SDI) and video clocking daughter card development kits that maximise system performance and simplify the design of new broadcast video equipment.

The two daughter cards are compatible with development kits from Altera and Xilinx and include synthesizable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) source code and the entire SDI signal path and video clocking solution together on one board. This allows designers to evaluate system performance, implement or modify FPGA source code, finalise architectures and start new designs.  

Broadcast and professional video equipment designers now have a one-stop shop for beginning new, ultra-low jitter SDI designs for video routers, production switchers, video servers and a wide range of video editing and post-production equipment.

Both daughter cards support industry-standard 270 Mbps, 1.485 Gbps and 2.97 Gbps data rates, enabling transmission of digital video broadcasting-asynchronous serial interface (DVB-ASI), standard-definition (SMPTE 259M-C), high-definition (SMPTE 292M) and the new 3G-SDI standard (SMPTE 424M) for uncompressed serial transmission of 1080p50/60 signals over a single link of coaxial cable.  

SDALTEVK and SDXILEVK Daughter Cards/Development Kits National’s SDALTEVK daughter card plugs directly into Altera's Cyclone III development board via a high-speed mezannine connector (HSMC), while the SDXILEVK daughter card plugs directly into the Xilinx Spartan-3A development board via Avnet's EXP expansion module.

Each National daughter card supports a complete 3G-SDI signal path consisting of adaptive cable equaliser (LMH0344), deserialiser with reclocked loop through (LMH0341) and serialiser with integrated cable driver (LMH0340).

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