When a customer needs live footage captured from a legacy imaging system without touching its existing functionality, the clock starts ticking fast. For Digital Design Corporation (DDC), the answer was a purpose-built FPGA capture pipeline, backed by a development stack that got them from concept to working prototype without the overhead of custom hardware.
About DDC
Digital Design Corporation has spent more than 25 years providing high-end design services and doing what most firms only aspire to: taking a design from concept all the way through production under one roof. DDC is ISO 9001-2015 certified and employs a team of over 70 people (predominantly engineers) who specialize in FPGA-, SoC-, MLSoC-, and GPU-centric designs across video and imaging, industrial automation, audio, networking, and communications. They bring a large IP portfolio and a long track record as a partner with major SoC vendors going back to the early 2000s.
In addition to design services, their proprietary product lines reflect the depth of that expertise: the VAADR line of FPGA/SoC-based video recorders and SSDs (launched 2004) and the ANetD line of FPGA and microcontroller-based PoE IoT network appliances (also launched 2004). With over 100+ customers, many in the Fortune 500, DDC brings production-grade engineering discipline to every engagement, from first prototype to final deliverable.
The Challenge: Capturing Live Imagery Without Disrupting the Source
DDC was engaged by a customer with an existing imaging system that had limited available I/O, but needed live footage captured from it at production fidelity. The design constraint was unambiguous: don't compromise the source system's existing functionality.
The performance bar was equally clear: 2K video at 60 frames per second, acquired in real-time, post-processed, and offloaded to a capture card. This is not a forgiving specification. At 2K @ 60 fps, even modest latency or buffering gaps translate directly to dropped frames and corrupted data.
On the system side, DDC needed a development platform that was fairly compact, had both GPIO and dedicated resources like DisplayPort and DDR, and was sufficiently large to accommodate the full capture pipeline logic.
The Approach: LVDS Packetized Video Over Spare I/Os
The first engineering challenge was the physical interface to the source system. With limited I/O availability on the customer's hardware, DDC modified some of the spare and debug I/Os to transmit packetized video output over eight LVDS differential pairs. This gave them a clean, noise-immune signal path without any invasive changes to the host system.
To interface those LVDS signals with the XEM8320, DDC used Opal Kelly's SZG-BRK-STD, a prototype-stage breakout peripheral that provides direct access to the SYZYGY port's high-density connector. This allowed DDC to route the incoming LVDS pairs straight into the FPGA without designing a custom PCB adapter.
For synchronization, DDC implemented SDI-style per-channel framing flags, using bitslip and channel alignment logic to reliably lock to the packetized stream. Once the video was aligned, frames were buffered in the XEM8320's 1 GiB DDR4 SDRAM, labeled with a custom metadata overlay, and then offloaded downstream.
For the output path, DDC used Opal Kelly's SZG-DISPLAYPORT peripheral card, a dual-port DisplayPort 1.4-capable SYZYGY Transceiver (TXR4) module, to stream the processed video off the board. Connecting through a standardized SYZYGY transceiver port meant the DisplayPort output pipeline could be stood up and validated against known-good hardware without any custom board design cycles.
Why the XEM8320 Was the Right Fit
When DDC evaluated the build-vs-buy decision, the calculus was straightforward. As a design consultancy, DDC regularly builds custom carrier boards. They have the expertise. But for a prototype whose primary goal is proving streaming and capture functionality, that investment rarely pays off. The XEM8320 was selected specifically for the availability of the required peripheral modules and the ease of development and interfacing that comes with the FrontPanel USB interface built in.
“As with any prototype work, time and cost are of essence. Developing custom hardware for prototyping systems and subsystems is both time consuming and expensive. Using off-the-shelf development hardware where possible practically always has better ROI.”
— Andrew Newman, Digital Design Corporation
The XEM8320 checked the right technical boxes as well:
- AMD Artix UltraScale+ (XCAU25P-2FFVB676E): 308k logic cells and 1,200 DSP slices gave DDC sufficient fabric headroom for the full capture, alignment, buffering, and overlay pipeline. DDC's prior experience with UltraScale+ made SelectIO configuration and DisplayPort IP / transceiver bring-up "very straightforward."
- 1 GiB DDR4 SDRAM: The on-board memory was sufficient to buffer and reconstruct incoming video frames and augment them with metadata and custom overlays, a critical requirement for the application.
- Six SYZYGY expansion ports (four Standard, two Transceiver): gave DDC access to the SZG-BRK-STD for LVDS input and the SZG-DISPLAYPORT for video output, using a proofed-out hardware stack of commercially available peripheral modules.
- Compact form factor: at 170 mm × 97 mm, the XEM8320 addressed DDC's requirement for a reasonably compact development platform.
- FrontPanel USB 3.0 interface: provided a high-throughput host connection (measured >350 MiB/s real-world) without requiring custom USB or PCIe IP development.
Equally important was COTS availability. Should a module fail in the field, replacements can be procured from Opal Kelly quickly, eliminating the long-tail risk that plagues one-off custom hardware designs.
Development Velocity: FrontPanel SDK, SYZYGY, and Python-Driven Control
Beyond the hardware, two elements of the Opal Kelly ecosystem directly shaped how quickly DDC could move: the FrontPanel SDK and the standardized SYZYGY form factor.
The FrontPanel SDK's extensive documentation and availability of reference designs made setup fast. DDC built a full user-facing control GUI using the FrontPanel Python API in combination with the Gradio package, giving operators an accessible, browser-friendly interface to manipulate all aspects of the capture design without writing a line of C++.
“Extensive documentation and availability of reference designs has made the setup of the FrontPanel SDK easy. We were able to assemble a user-friendly GUI using the FrontPanel Python API in conjunction with Gradio. This allowed us to manipulate all aspects of the design.”
— Andrew Newman, Digital Design Corporation
On the hardware side, the standardized SYZYGY form factor for peripheral cards made integration equally straightforward. DDC had access to COTS capture cards that they could interface with the devkit directly, using a proofed-out hardware stack rather than working through custom adapter designs.
DDC also noted that their work on this project predated the full release of FrontPanel 6.0, Opal Kelly's latest SDK expansion — a web-based development platform built on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS with React component integration and native FrontPanel device behavior. Showcased at embedded world North America 2025, FrontPanel 6.0 is designed for exactly the kind of streamlined application workflow DDC had built with Python and Gradio.
“I am very much looking forward to switching over to that workflow for future designs, since that seemed like a much more streamlined solution that serves a similar purpose.”
— Andrew Newman, on FrontPanel 6.0
Handoff and Long-Term Maintainability
For a design consultancy, the end of a project is only the beginning of the customer relationship. Andrew Newman highlighted the long-term risk reduction that comes from building on a standardized, commercially available platform.
“Having COTS availability for the components has reduced the ongoing risk to the project at large. In case of failures, replacements can be procured from Opal Kelly in a timely manner in order to resume work.”
— Andrew Newman, Digital Design Corporation
This is a concrete, often undervalued benefit of integration modules. A custom carrier board designed once for a single project creates a parts and maintenance dependency that can haunt a customer for years. With the XEM8320 and SYZYGY peripheral ecosystem, the customer inherits a supported, documented, actively sold platform — not an orphaned design.
The Takeaway
When asked to identify the standout features of the Opal Kelly ecosystem that made this project a success, Andrew Newman's answer was clear and practical: clear documentation, FrontPanel API/Python support, standardized interfaces, availability, and reasonable pricing.
That's a list that reflects real engineering priorities. Not abstract capabilities, but the day-to-day factors that determine whether a prototype ships on time, whether a new engineer can get productive quickly, and whether a customer can trust the hardware they've been handed.
For firms tackling demanding imaging, data acquisition, or signal-processing prototype work, the DDC / XEM8320 project illustrates the compounding value of building on a well-documented, ecosystem-backed platform. The XEM8320's combination of Artix UltraScale+ fabric, integrated DDR4, SYZYGY peripheral expansion, and FrontPanel SDK didn't just reduce DDC's development risk; it let them bring their full expertise to bear on the hard parts of the problem.
