Artix-7 boards

Has anyone had any experience of using these :

http://www.robotshop.com/uk/cmod-a7-35t-breadboardable-artix-7-fpga-module.ht
ml?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkqXI9rje1gIVxZkbCh2l_AkhEAEYASAAEgLo_PD_BwE

They aren't in stock yet but maybe some have been shipped. 
I'm looking for comments on them for use with novice FPGA users.
Anything you have to say may be helpful as I'm looking to buy a few of them.

Also if anyone knows of a low cost spartan7 board that may hit the market
very soon I'd welcome the info.

thanks

-- 

john

=========================
http://johntech.co.uk
=========================

On Saturday, 10/7/2017 8:16 AM, john wrote:
> Has anyone had any experience of using these :
> 
> http://www.robotshop.com/uk/cmod-a7-35t-breadboardable-artix-7-fpga-module.ht
> ml?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIkqXI9rje1gIVxZkbCh2l_AkhEAEYASAAEgLo_PD_BwE
> 
> They aren't in stock yet but maybe some have been shipped.
> I'm looking for comments on them for use with novice FPGA users.
> Anything you have to say may be helpful as I'm looking to buy a few of them.
> 
> Also if anyone knows of a low cost spartan7 board that may hit the market
> very soon I'd welcome the info.
> 
> thanks
> 

No experience with that board, however I have had experience
with the Artix-7 35T.  It's basically a 50T nobbled in software.
The way Xilinx does this leaves the entire 50T fabric available,
but limits the number of each fabric component you can use.  This
results in a device that can easily work with a 100% "full"
design, since it's the equivalent of a 70% full 50T.  Either
this device (smaller Artix-7 series) or Spartan-7 requires Vivado
software.  ISE does not support them.

 From the description it looks like the board has very little
external RAM, both considering total storage capacity and
bandwidth.  A single 8-bit wide DDR3 memory would have more
of both, at least for streaming data like video.  In general
I use the peripherals of a board to help me decide if I can
use it more than the FPGA itself.  If you're not interested
in video processing, it's probably OK.

-- 
Gabor

In article <orare6$vci$1@dont-email.me>, nospam@nospam.com says...
> 
> No experience with that board, however I have had experience
> with the Artix-7 35T.  It's basically a 50T nobbled in software.
> The way Xilinx does this leaves the entire 50T fabric available,
> but limits the number of each fabric component you can use.  This
> results in a device that can easily work with a 100% "full"
> design, since it's the equivalent of a 70% full 50T.  Either
> this device (smaller Artix-7 series) or Spartan-7 requires Vivado
> software.  ISE does not support them.
> 
>  From the description it looks like the board has very little
> external RAM, both considering total storage capacity and
> bandwidth.  A single 8-bit wide DDR3 memory would have more
> of both, at least for streaming data like video.  In general
> I use the peripherals of a board to help me decide if I can
> use it more than the FPGA itself.  If you're not interested
> in video processing, it's probably OK.

Hi Gabor

Thanks for the info - yes I'm looking at them specifically because
they work with Vivado. 

I don't need a lot of resources as their use will be to prototype
cpu components (stacks, control paths etc)  Once developed
the components will be integrated on a much more capable 
system.

As long as they have enough resources to do at least one cpu
function comfortably they should do the job I need I think. 

There are no complex or high bandwidth  full apps it has to run.
Does all that seem reasonable?
 
-- 

john

=========================
http://johntech.co.uk
=========================