Altium FPGA board

[Chuck McManis]

I just got the Altium flyer in the mail today and they are offering a free
Nanoboard (with the purchase of their overpriced CAD package The
Nanoboard actually looks pretty cool, has anyone used one?


--
--Chuck McManis
Email to the devnull address is discarded
http://www.mcmanis.com/chuck/

 

[Leon Heller]

"Chuck McManis" <devnull@mcmanis.com> wrote in message
news:4ASrc.55752$1G4.10014@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com...

I just got the Altium flyer in the mail today and they are offering a free
Nanoboard (with the purchase of their overpriced CAD package The
Nanoboard actually looks pretty cool, has anyone used one?

I subscribe to the PEDA mailing list for users of Protel in its various
incarnations, just for schadenfreude - I don't use it. I vaguely remember
someone offering their 'free' Nanoboard for sale. Altium has just
announced a couple of new daughterboards for it.

Leon
--
Leon Heller, G1HSM
http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

Chuck McManis wrote:

I just got the Altium flyer in the mail today and they are offering a free
Nanoboard (with the purchase of their overpriced CAD package The
Nanoboard actually looks pretty cool, has anyone used one?

The Nexar package is not really that overpriced. It allows to develop
FPGAs with a 8051 kernel built in, with debugger, compiler, everything.
No, I didn't get Nexar and nanoboard yet. I'm glad to have left the 8051
architecture with just one pointer register behind me. I'm also not a
friend of C compilers either and am therefore happy with an AVR and
something else but C.
The low number of units I ship doesn't forbid to have an FPGA plus an
AVR on a board. That may change from a certain number of units upward,
though.

Rene
--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

 

[Chuck McManis]

"Rene Tschaggelar" <none@none.net> wrote in message
news:40b0fd9d$0$721$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch...

The Nexar package is not really that overpriced. It allows to develop
FPGAs with a 8051 kernel built in, with debugger, compiler, everything.

I should have been more crisp, $8,000 is waaaaaaay overpriced for me. Even
the $1000 I spent on the Proteus package (www.labcenter-electronics.com)
seemed steep but it too has the embedded processor simulator (PIC, AVR, and
8051) and as I use PICs (some AVRs, but no 8051 yet) in my robotics I was
moderatly motivated by it.

A friend of mine hat the CircuitStudio package and was not complimentary so
I steered clear of that too.

The low number of units I ship doesn't forbid to have an FPGA plus an
AVR on a board. That may change from a certain number of units upward,
though.

Bringing it back on topic...

Have you played with the FPSLIC stuff? AVR core plus FPGA? I've got the
development board as I was looking at some sort of custome baseboard
controller (SMBus, i2c, etc) and it looks great but Atmel doesn't seem
particularly committed to it ...

--Chuck

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

Chuck McManis wrote:

"Rene Tschaggelar" <none@none.net> wrote in message
news:40b0fd9d$0$721$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch...

The Nexar package is not really that overpriced. It allows to develop
FPGAs with a 8051 kernel built in, with debugger, compiler, everything.


I should have been more crisp, $8,000 is waaaaaaay overpriced for me. Even
the $1000 I spent on the Proteus package (www.labcenter-electronics.com)
seemed steep but it too has the embedded processor simulator (PIC, AVR, and
8051) and as I use PICs (some AVRs, but no 8051 yet) in my robotics I was
moderatly motivated by it.

Yes, for non-protel user it is a lot to just have a look at.
And when you don't have a certain number of projects where you could
save a lot of time on development, it could be hard to justify.

Bringing it back on topic...

Have you played with the FPSLIC stuff? AVR core plus FPGA? I've got the
development board as I was looking at some sort of custome baseboard
controller (SMBus, i2c, etc) and it looks great but Atmel doesn't seem
particularly committed to it ...

As said, I had no gain in putting any core into an FPGA yet. While using
a standalone cpu let you select between a bunch of compilers, they
somehow vanish when you put a core into an FPGA.
BTW, what does an I2C or SMB, that cannot be done with some port pins ?

Rene
--
Ing.Buero R.Tschaggelar - http://www.ibrtses.com
& commercial newsgroups - http://www.talkto.net

 

[Chuck McManis]

"Rene Tschaggelar" <none@none.net> wrote in message
news:40b323b8$0$700$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch...

Chuck McManis wrote:
Bringing it back on topic...

Have you played with the FPSLIC stuff? AVR core plus FPGA? I've got the
development board as I was looking at some sort of custome baseboard
controller (SMBus, i2c, etc) and it looks great but Atmel doesn't seem
particularly committed to it ...

As said, I had no gain in putting any core into an FPGA yet. While using
a standalone cpu let you select between a bunch of compilers, they
somehow vanish when you put a core into an FPGA.
BTW, what does an I2C or SMB, that cannot be done with some port pins ?

You mis-read what I typed. The FPSLIC system embeds a "real" ATMEL AVR core
inside an FPGA fabric. All the ATMEL compilers work as you'd expect, all the
peripherals are on the expected pins, except that the pins go into the FPGA
fabric where you can either route them to an "off chip" I/O (using them then
like you would normally) or to some device you've cons'd up inside the FPGA.

Imagine a multichip module where the FPGA and the microprocessor are on the
same subtrate.

--Chuck

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

Chuck McManis wrote:

"Rene Tschaggelar" <none@none.net> wrote in message
news:40b323b8$0$700$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch...

Chuck McManis wrote:

Bringing it back on topic...

Have you played with the FPSLIC stuff? AVR core plus FPGA? I've got the
development board as I was looking at some sort of custome baseboard
controller (SMBus, i2c, etc) and it looks great but Atmel doesn't seem
particularly committed to it ...

As said, I had no gain in putting any core into an FPGA yet. While using
a standalone cpu let you select between a bunch of compilers, they
somehow vanish when you put a core into an FPGA.
BTW, what does an I2C or SMB, that cannot be done with some port pins ?


You mis-read what I typed. The FPSLIC system embeds a "real" ATMEL AVR core
inside an FPGA fabric. All the ATMEL compilers work as you'd expect, all the
peripherals are on the expected pins, except that the pins go into the FPGA
fabric where you can either route them to an "off chip" I/O (using them then
like you would normally) or to some device you've cons'd up inside the FPGA.

Imagine a multichip module where the FPGA and the microprocessor are on the
same subtrate.

No, no, I didn't misread.
The more modern compilers come with an IDE, including programmer that
download the code and the data and even allow to debug the code on
target. This likely won't work anymore, as the integration likely does
not go this far. And the ADC is missing of course too.

I doubt the AVR core is from Atmel itself, rather from some guys who
took the pain of assembling an AVR act-alike. Atmel is of course
interested in selling their own chips.

Rene

 

[Eric Smith]

"Chuck McManis" <devnull@mcmanis.com> writes:

You mis-read what I typed. The FPSLIC system embeds a "real" ATMEL AVR core
inside an FPGA fabric.

Looks nice, except for the price. For that kind of money, I can buy
a Spartan II, IIE, or III that is big enough to hold my FPGA design
along with a small processor soft core and block RAMs for the memory.

 

[Chuck McManis]

"Rene Tschaggelar" <none@none.net> wrote in message
news:40b4e313$0$718$5402220f@news.sunrise.ch...

No, no, I didn't misread.
The more modern compilers come with an IDE, including programmer that
download the code and the data and even allow to debug the code on
target. This likely won't work anymore, as the integration likely does
not go this far. And the ADC is missing of course too.

I doubt the AVR core is from Atmel itself, rather from some guys who
took the pain of assembling an AVR act-alike. Atmel is of course
interested in selling their own chips.

Then we are talking about two different things. Atmel part number AT94K05 is
an Atmel AVR core that is surrounded by an FPGA. It is sold by Atmel and all
the standard IDE's and tools work with the AVR core which, unless Atmel is
really stupid, is the exact same core they use in their other chips. The
evaluation kit number is STK594 and it plugs into the STK501 base. The part
number on this demo board is the AT94K05.

Atmel is of course interested in selling their own chips.

This IS thier own chip.

--Chuck