References to good PCI boards and some newbie questions - please help!

Hi,

we are starting a project in our group porting several CPU intensive
but simple apps to FPGA platform. We have selected PCI as a way to
communicate with a host PC. We have some experience programming FPGAs
but not PCI-based (need PCI now due to data transfer speed
requirements).

I would be very grateful if someone can answer the folowing for us:

1. What PCI boards you would recommend containing 2-4M total gates and
32MB+ of on-board RAM? We have looked at a couple of development kits
from Altera and Xilinx and they all run over $2,000. Is there anything
cheaper?

2. Do we have to buy a license to PCI core in order to use the board?
I mean we are not going to modify any of the PCI interface functions.
For all we care, PCI could have been implemented in a dedicated chip
on our dev boards...

Thanks all in advance for your responses!

Valery.

> 2. Do we have to buy a license to PCI core in order to use the board?
> I mean we are not going to modify any of the PCI interface functions.
> For all we care, PCI could have been implemented in a dedicated chip
> on our dev boards...
>
> Thanks all in advance for your responses!
>
 OK I know %$&$ all about the black arts but www.opencores .com looks like a
good place for free IP cores.

Back to lurking.....

Mike