The Spartan-3A DSP family of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) solves the design challenges in most high- volume, cost-sensitive, high-performance DSP applications. The two-member family offers densities ranging from 1.8 to 3.4 million system gates. 

The Spartan-3A DSP family builds on the success of the Spartan-3A FPGA family by increasing the amount of memory per logic and adding XtremeDSP DSP48A slices. New features improve system performance and reduce the cost of configuration. These Spartan-3A DSP FPGA enhancements, combined with proven 90 nm process technology, deliver more functionality and bandwidth per dollar than ever before, setting the new standard in the programmable logic and DSP processing industry. The Spartan-3A DSP FPGAs extend and enhance the Spartan-3A FPGA family. 

The block RAMs are also enhanced to run faster by adding an output register. Both the block RAM and DSP48A slices in the Spartan-3A DSP devices run at 250 MHz in the lowest cost, standard -4 speed grade. 

Because of their exceptional DSP price/performance ratio, Spartan-3A DSP FPGAs are ideally suited to a wide range of consumer electronics applications, such as broadband access, home networking, display/projection, and digital television. 

The Spartan-3A DSP family is a superior alternative to mask programmed ASICs. FPGAs avoid the high initial cost, lengthy development cycles, and the inherent inflexibility of conventional ASICs. Also, FPGA programmability permits design upgrades in the field with no hardware replacement necessary, an impossibility with ASICs.