Avnet Introduces Ultra96-V2 Development Board

Written by Avnet

Updated board includes new features for industrial applications and wider market reach

PHOENIX - Media OutReach - 3 April 2019 - Just one year after introducing its successful Ultra96 development board, Avnet (Nasdaq: AVT), a leading global technology solutions provider, has released the new Ultra96-V2 to power industrial-grade Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Complete with an updated radio module that enables engineers to extend their reach into new markets, Avnet's Ultra96-V2 is an ideal platform for smart home, automotive, industrial controls and many other applications.^[1]^[2]^[3]

"The Ultra96-V2 board offers engineers and makers a very price competitive development platform for rapidly prototyping the next breakthroughs in AI, IoT, robotics and beyond," said Bryan Fletcher, technical marketing director, Avnet. "Avnet is proud to support the 96Boards initiative by bringing new performance, additional power-savings, and programmable logic advances to this community of Arm experts and enthusiasts."

The Ultra96-V2 enhances the capabilities of the 96Boards community with a range of peripherals and acceleration engines in the programmable logic not available from other offerings. Like its predecessor, the Ultra96-V2 is an Arm-based, Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+™ MPSoC development board built on the Linaro 96Boards Consumer Edition (CE) specification. The 96Boards are open source development platforms that can be used by system software developers for software applications, hardware devices and kernel programming for operating systems.

Engineers can now extend the market reach of their innovations globally with the Ultra96-V2's new feature -- a Wi-Fi / Bluetooth radio module from Microchip that is Agency Certified in more than 75 countries. Wireless options include 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 5 Low Energy support.

Avnet also updated all components on the Ultra96-V2 to allow industrial temperature grade options so that the board can operate in harsh industrial applications. Additional power control and monitoring is also possible with Infineon's integrated power management ICs (PMICS) designed for tight board space requirements.

"Ultra96-V2 allows the 96Boards community members to explore programmable logic to accelerate software. Software engineers' C, C++, and OpenCL algorithms can be compiled into the FPGA portion of the Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC to achieve massive parallelism and really high performance," said Tomas Evensen, CTO of Embedded Software at Xilinx.

Technical Specifications

The Ultra96-V2 features include:

Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC ZU3EG A484
Micron 2 GB (512M x32) LPDDR4 Memory
Delkin 16 GB microSD card + adapter
PetaLinux environment available for download
Microchip Wi-Fi / Bluetooth
Mini DisplayPort (MiniDP or mDP)
1x USB 3.0 Type Micro-B upstream port
2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0 Type A downstream ports
40-pin 96Boards Low-speed expansion header
60-pin 96Boards High-speed expansion header
85mm x 54mm form factor
Linaro 96Boards Consumer Edition compatible

The platform comes as a complete development kit including:

Ultra96-V2 development board
16 GB microSD card + adapter
Voucher for SDSoC license from Xilinx
Quick-start instruction card

The Ultra96-V2 development board will be available in Asia from June for $249. For more information and how to pre-order today, visit https://www.avnet.com/wps/portal/apac/products/product-highlights/ultra96-v2-board/.

Avnet's new Ultra96-V2 is an ideal platform to power industrial-grade AI and IoT applications for smart home, automotive, industrial controls and many others.

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