Hey guys,

I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
features on an FPGA dev kit?

Thanks in advance!
Allen

On 1 Apr., 07:43, allen <ayho...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
> see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> features on an FPGA dev kit?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Allen

Hi Allen,
the only thing on which everyone will positively agree is an FPGA at
least. (Oh, I forgot to mention the RS-232! :-)  )
Everything else depends on the application, even the exact type of
FPGA.

You either end up with something that is so mediocre, that only
beginners will use it if the price is low enough, but remains useless
for professional designers,
Or the board will be so overloaded and expensive, that noone can or
will spend the money for it.

Look for example at the boards offered on the Xilinx webpage.
There you find a number of boards for each FPGA family. You almpost
always find a Starter board, some DSP specialized board, some Video
board, maybe a FPGA computing board and so on.

Maybe you could explain a little more about the background and
intention of your query.

Have a nice synthesis
  Eilert

On Apr 1, 7:43=A0am, allen
<ayho...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
> see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> features on an FPGA dev kit?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Allen

It depends on the purpose of the board. For beginners and hobbyst
"must have" features will be different. For professional users "must
have" features will be different. But there may be some common
features like rs232 or external memory.

Hi,

A student board should contain :

- Switches
- Buttons
- Seven Segments Displays (Multiplexed)
- LCD or a port for a standard 16x2 LCD
- Port for an optional graphical LCD (very nice)
- RS232
- USB
- Memory=20
- Minimal RGB driver
- Optional port for more Clock sources
- A/D converter
- D/A converter
- An add-on for motor driving (seperate board)
- PS/2 interface

A good idea for educational board is to that the FPGA could be changed e.g.=
 Altera or Xilinx. A decent board should have enough features so that a stu=
dent can develop his graduate project on it so that students can spend more=
 time on developing the hardware.

Professional board for computing purposes
- Lots of Memory
- Good Video driver
- 1 or 2 A/D converter
- 2 or 3 USB version 3
- PCI interface
- Slot for more memory
- 4 line LCD (debugging etc.)
- Keyboard interface

These are some ideas, Good luck for your development board

Regards,

Joseph

"allen" <a...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:8...@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> Hey guys,
>
> I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
> see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> features on an FPGA dev kit?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Allen

I've never seen any point in general purpose development boards - I design a 
board for the job. Reference designs are useful.

If I were going to attempt something with a big feasibility issue it might 
be worth buying a fancy dev board but it hasn't happened yet.

Michael Kellett 

On 3/31/2011 10:43 PM, allen wrote:
> Hey guys,
>
> I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
> see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> features on an FPGA dev kit?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Allen

Somewhere that I can actually solder down components.  Plated through 
holes on 0.100" centers, with some grounds and VCCIOs interspersed.  If 
I'm going to the dev kit it's either because a) I'm trying to get up to 
speed on a brand spanking new processor or b) I'm going off-datasheet 
and need to get measured results for things they won't spec.

-- 
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology
Email address is currently out of order

In my opinion:
1. FT245(or better FT2232 in FIFO mode - faster) for USB data transfer - 
this can be implemented easily either on PC side or FPGA side.
2. DDR or DDR2 memory. Better 2 separate chips if possible. Also easy to 
implement, because all vendors offer controllers for their FPGAs.
3. Ethernet.
4. IO expansions (well routed, not like Xilinx made on their S3E kit).

These are 4 basic things.
If I could find a PCI-E board + at least 2 LVDS RX and 2 TX outputs using 
SMA or other useful connectors in addition to everything I mentioned 
before - that would be perfect.

There are plenty of boards for beginners, but nothing in the middle range to 
get more specific. The Cyclone IV GX starter kit would be just perfect, 
however it has no expansion IOs... Other PCI-E boards cost too much.



"allen" <a...@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:8...@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
> Hey guys,
>
> I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
> see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> features on an FPGA dev kit?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> Allen 

On Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:43:44 -0700, allen wrote:

> Hey guys,
> 
> I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to see
> if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> features on an FPGA dev kit?
> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Allen


Not that I use dev kits, but if I did I would look for the following:

- For an FPGA with transceivers, I would want two of them brought out to 
a pair of SFP+ sockets.  The PCB routing should be of sufficient quality 
to allow this to work at 10Gb/s.
The SFP+ control signals would also need to be connected to the FPGA (via 
level translators if the FPGA can't handle 3.3V hotplug signals).

- Sites on the PCB for at least a few clock oscillators suitable for 
clocking the transceivers.  These would be LVDS or PECL oscillators, not 
the CMOS ones that don't work so well above a few hundred MHz.  One or 
two sites would be populated with oscillators that would allow the 
transceivers to do 1GbE and 10GbE.  (The spare sites are to allow the 
user to solder in their own oscs to support other protocols.)  

- A USB to JTAG programming dongle built-in, probably using something 
like an FT2232H or FT232H.
- Open source host driver software for the built-in JTAG programming 
hardware, with binaries available for at least WinXP, Win7 and major 
flavours of Linux.

Regards,
Allan

Much delayed but will hopefully be actually be on
show at ESC Silicon
Valley in May our Raggedstone3 will have most of this for you.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On Apr 1, 9:33=A0pm, "scrts" <mailsoc@[remove@here]gmail.com> wrote:
> In my opinion:
> 1. FT245(or better FT2232 in FIFO mode - faster) for USB data transfer -
> this can be implemented easily either on PC side or FPGA side.
> 2. DDR or DDR2 memory. Better 2 separate chips if possible. Also easy to
> implement, because all vendors offer controllers for their FPGAs.
> 3. Ethernet.
> 4. IO expansions (well routed, not like Xilinx made on their S3E kit).
>
> These are 4 basic things.
> If I could find a PCI-E board + at least 2 LVDS RX and 2 TX outputs using
> SMA or other useful connectors in addition to everything I mentioned
> before - that would be perfect.
>
> There are plenty of boards for beginners, but nothing in the middle range=
 to
> get more specific. The Cyclone IV GX starter kit would be just perfect,
> however it has no expansion IOs... Other PCI-E boards cost too much.
>
> "allen" <ayho...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:8...@q40g2000prh.googlegroups.com...
>
> > Hey guys,
>
> > I work in the FPGA development kit sector, and I was just looking to
> > see if you guys had any ideas regarding what would be your MUST HAVE
> > features on an FPGA dev kit?
>
> > Thanks in advance!
> > Allen

"Allan Herriman"
<a...@hotmail.com> a écrit :
> - A USB to JTAG programming dongle built-in, probably using something
> like an FT2232H or FT232H.
> - Open source host driver software for the built-in JTAG programming
> hardware, with binaries available for at least WinXP, Win7 and major
> flavours of Linux.


What are the advantages of using this chip compared to using the
manufacturer USB cable ?