Choosing the right FPGA board

[FrewCen]

Hello!

I have several years of experience in programming, and I'd like to move
on to FPGAs to enjoy more fun.

As I have a limited budget for my playing with electronics, I'd like to
choose the most versatile board for the best price with a decent support
from manufacturer. I'm a student, so I guess the academic prices apply
for me.

I tried to do my own research on google. What I wanted to have on my
board was:
- VGA/HDMI port
- SD card slot
- some memory
- PS/2 keyboard
- USB and Enthernet, although I have almost no idea about how these two
work


I found these boards:

Basys™2 - Xilinx Spartan-3E, 8-bit VGA, PS/2 - 69$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Basys™3 - Xilinx Artix-7, 12-bit VGA, USB host for kb/mice, flash -

79$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...

miniSpartan6+ - Spartan 6 LX 9, HDMI, serial flash, microSD - 75$
http://www.scarabhardware.com/product/minisp6/
ZYBO Zynq™-7000 - Xilinx Z-7010, Cortex-A9, flash, memory, SD, USB,

gigabit
Ethernet, HDMI, 16-bit VGA - 125$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
> Altera DE0 Board - Altera Cyclone III 3C16, 4-BIT VGA, SD, serial port,
PS/2,
flash - 81$
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?...
> Altera DE0-CV Board - Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N, 4-bit VGA, microSD,
PS/2 -
99$
> Altera DE1 Board - Altera Cyclone II 2C20, 4-bit R-2R per channel VGA,
PS/2, SD,
flash - 127$

here's where I can't decide. Again, cost is important for me, but I also
know that Digilent and Terasic are Some Names.

What would you choose? Do you have any of your own recommendations?
Please help, I'm honestly an absolute nooob here.


---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

 

On Monday, April 20, 2015 at 7:01:43 AM UTC-5, FrewCen wrote:

Hello!

I have several years of experience in programming, and I'd like to move
on to FPGAs to enjoy more fun.

As I have a limited budget for my playing with electronics, I'd like to
choose the most versatile board for the best price with a decent support
from manufacturer. I'm a student, so I guess the academic prices apply
for me.

I tried to do my own research on google. What I wanted to have on my
board was:
- VGA/HDMI port
- SD card slot
- some memory
- PS/2 keyboard
- USB and Enthernet, although I have almost no idea about how these two
work


I found these boards:

Basys(tm)2 - Xilinx Spartan-3E, 8-bit VGA, PS/2 - 69$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Basys(tm)3 - Xilinx Artix-7, 12-bit VGA, USB host for kb/mice, flash -
79$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
miniSpartan6+ - Spartan 6 LX 9, HDMI, serial flash, microSD - 75$
http://www.scarabhardware.com/product/minisp6/
ZYBO Zynq(tm)-7000 - Xilinx Z-7010, Cortex-A9, flash, memory, SD, USB,
gigabit
Ethernet, HDMI, 16-bit VGA - 125$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Altera DE0 Board - Altera Cyclone III 3C16, 4-BIT VGA, SD, serial port,
PS/2,
flash - 81$
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?...
Altera DE0-CV Board - Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N, 4-bit VGA, microSD,
PS/2 -
99$
Altera DE1 Board - Altera Cyclone II 2C20, 4-bit R-2R per channel VGA,
PS/2, SD,
flash - 127$

here's where I can't decide. Again, cost is important for me, but I also
know that Digilent and Terasic are Some Names.

What would you choose? Do you have any of your own recommendations?
Please help, I'm honestly an absolute nooob here.


---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

I'd stick with the newer FPGAs. To make your learning as relevant as possible.

Another approach is to pay to go to a seminar where you get to keep the FPGA board. Cyclone V SOC or SmartFusion2 for $99 each.

 

[Brad Whitlock]

On Monday, April 20, 2015 at 6:01:43 AM UTC-6, FrewCen wrote:

Hello!

I have several years of experience in programming, and I'd like to move
on to FPGAs to enjoy more fun.

As I have a limited budget for my playing with electronics, I'd like to
choose the most versatile board for the best price with a decent support
from manufacturer. I'm a student, so I guess the academic prices apply
for me.

I tried to do my own research on google. What I wanted to have on my
board was:
- VGA/HDMI port
- SD card slot
- some memory
- PS/2 keyboard
- USB and Enthernet, although I have almost no idea about how these two
work


I found these boards:

Basys(tm)2 - Xilinx Spartan-3E, 8-bit VGA, PS/2 - 69$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Basys(tm)3 - Xilinx Artix-7, 12-bit VGA, USB host for kb/mice, flash -
79$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
miniSpartan6+ - Spartan 6 LX 9, HDMI, serial flash, microSD - 75$
http://www.scarabhardware.com/product/minisp6/
ZYBO Zynq(tm)-7000 - Xilinx Z-7010, Cortex-A9, flash, memory, SD, USB,
gigabit
Ethernet, HDMI, 16-bit VGA - 125$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Altera DE0 Board - Altera Cyclone III 3C16, 4-BIT VGA, SD, serial port,
PS/2,
flash - 81$
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?...
Altera DE0-CV Board - Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N, 4-bit VGA, microSD,
PS/2 -
99$
Altera DE1 Board - Altera Cyclone II 2C20, 4-bit R-2R per channel VGA,
PS/2, SD,
flash - 127$

here's where I can't decide. Again, cost is important for me, but I also
know that Digilent and Terasic are Some Names.

What would you choose? Do you have any of your own recommendations?
Please help, I'm honestly an absolute nooob here.


---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

FrewCen,

You didn't specify your budget and I noticed that for the Digilent prices, you showed the 'Acedemic' price...

I recently chose to get a ZYBO from Digilent and am happy with my decision. In my opinion, SoC based development kits are the way to go because they provide the most learning opportunity. It is also my opinion that industry is in need of SoC engineers, so the learning will be relevant.

With the ZYBO, you can learn FPGA design as well as embedded uC design. You can pretty well skip all the ARM related development if you want, and focus on just FPGA stuff, but having the ARM cores there makes for a very versatile learning opportunity.

If you are interested in Embedded Linux, I recommend you get at least 512MB DDR. The Basys 3 would make a poor embedded Linux system IMO, but it can and has been done. I prefer to not limit myself at the outset and get more hardware than I think I'll need. It's not that expensive...

Along with the dev board, a decent book will be very helpful. I recomment Advanced FPGA Design by Steve Kilts.

Good luck on your Journey,
BradW

 

[Theo Markettos]

FrewCen <105208@fpgarelated> wrote:

I found these boards:

Basysâ?¢2 - Xilinx Spartan-3E, 8-bit VGA, PS/2 - 69$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Basysâ?¢3 - Xilinx Artix-7, 12-bit VGA, USB host for kb/mice, flash -
79$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
miniSpartan6+ - Spartan 6 LX 9, HDMI, serial flash, microSD - 75$
http://www.scarabhardware.com/product/minisp6/
ZYBO Zynqâ?¢-7000 - Xilinx Z-7010, Cortex-A9, flash, memory, SD, USB,
gigabit
Ethernet, HDMI, 16-bit VGA - 125$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Altera DE0 Board - Altera Cyclone III 3C16, 4-BIT VGA, SD, serial port,
PS/2,
flash - 81$
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?...
Altera DE0-CV Board - Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N, 4-bit VGA, microSD,
PS/2 -
99$
Altera DE1 Board - Altera Cyclone II 2C20, 4-bit R-2R per channel VGA,
PS/2, SD,
flash - 127$

here's where I can't decide. Again, cost is important for me, but I also
know that Digilent and Terasic are Some Names.

You should understand that Xilinx v Altera is a bit like PC v Mac (not
necessarily that way round) - you aren't just choosing a part vendor, you're
choosing a whole ecosystem and toolchain which will have a big impact on the
experience for have.

I'd avoid the older parts (Cyclone II and III) since those may not be
supported in future versions of the Altera toolchain. The same might apply
to the Spartan 3E, though I'm not as familiar with that.

One hidden caveat is that the later Altera devices (eg Cyclone V) take much
more RAM in your PC for synthesis than older ones (eg 1.5 v 6 GiB). So
depends what kind of a PC you're going to use.

Be aware that the Zynq (and the DE1-SoC) have an ARM onboard, and some of
the peripherals are on the ARM side rather than the FPGA side. You can,
however, ignore the ARM side if you like and just use the FPGA peripherals.

Digilent and Terasic are both suppliers of education boards, which explains
why the costs of those boards are lower than other vendors. Their
popularity also means there are more educational resources for using their
boards.

Theo

 

I would second Theo's comments and add that you can download the design software of both X and A and play around with it to see what you like more. The difference in the design software is much bigger then in the devices.

I also would use new generation devices, either with Arm (Zynq, Cyclone V Soc) or without (Artix 7, Cyclone V). The Arm devices are much more complex to start with, on the other hand they might be more interesting for you with your classic software background. You can use Linux on the Arm and off-load some tasks to the FPGA part. If you want to use Ethernet and/or USB, I would recommend this approach.

Thomas

 

A couple you didn't mention from Terasic that warrant consideration:
DE1-SoC Board ($175)
Cyclone V GX Starter Kit ($179)

The latter does not have an arm cpu, but does have an arduino header, for further expansion using aruduino shields.

Andy

 

[Theo Markettos]

HT-Lab <hans64@htminuslab.com> wrote:

Andy made a good point, don't be too concerned if your favourite board
is missing an interface. Using Arduino or my favourite SPI (easy to
implement) you can add a whole range of interfaces to your board
(SD/Ethernet/VGA/etc). Have a look at various breakout boards offered by
Sparkfun and others.

It depends what you want to do. Lots of Arduino interfaces are really
limited because they're designed to be chained to a feeble ATmega. So you
can divide into those interfaces that are naturally slow, like I2C, keypad,
accelerometer, etc, and those where high bandwidth is important
(SD/Ethernet/VGA/etc). The naturally slow interfaces won't lose anything
using an Arduino interface, while the high bandwidth interfaces /can/ be
driven via an Arduino shield, but will lose a lot of performance while doing
so.

OTOH, doing something like USB virtually demands a CPU - you won't be able
to usefully drive it from an FPGA alone (without soft-CPU inside).
So having a CPU do that makes sense (either a microcontroller or on-FPGA
ARM - using it on a soft-CPU like NIOS-II or Microblaze is probably too much
hassle).

So I would recommend a simple board with a big FPGA and some external
SRAM, then build up your knowledge by adding various interfaces and
softcores.

Apart from the excellent boards from Digilent and Terasic I would also
suggest you check out eBay and Enterpoint,

What do you suggest looking for on eBay?

As has already been said, choosing a board is more than just the feature
list -- the example projects and tutorials make a big difference.

Theo

 

[HT-Lab]

On 21/04/2015 02:23, jonesandy@comcast.net wrote:
...

The latter does not have an arm cpu, but does have an arduino header, for further expansion using aruduino shields.

Andy

Andy made a good point, don't be too concerned if your favourite board
is missing an interface. Using Arduino or my favourite SPI (easy to
implement) you can add a whole range of interfaces to your board
(SD/Ethernet/VGA/etc). Have a look at various breakout boards offered by
Sparkfun and others.
So I would recommend a simple board with a big FPGA and some external
SRAM, then build up your knowledge by adding various interfaces and
softcores.

Apart from the excellent boards from Digilent and Terasic I would also
suggest you check out eBay and Enterpoint,

Good luck,
Hans
www.ht-lab.com

 

[Rob Gaddi]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2015 23:33:10 +0100, Theo Markettos wrote:

FrewCen <105208@fpgarelated> wrote:
I found these boards:

Basysâ?¢2 - Xilinx Spartan-3E, 8-bit VGA, PS/2 - 69$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Basysâ?¢3 - Xilinx Artix-7, 12-bit VGA, USB host for kb/mice, flash -
79$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
miniSpartan6+ - Spartan 6 LX 9, HDMI, serial flash, microSD - 75$
http://www.scarabhardware.com/product/minisp6/
ZYBO Zynqâ?¢-7000 - Xilinx Z-7010, Cortex-A9, flash, memory, SD, USB,
gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, 16-bit VGA - 125$
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Nav...
Altera DE0 Board - Altera Cyclone III 3C16, 4-BIT VGA, SD, serial
port,
PS/2,
flash - 81$
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?...
Altera DE0-CV Board - Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N, 4-bit VGA,
microSD,
PS/2 -
99$
Altera DE1 Board - Altera Cyclone II 2C20, 4-bit R-2R per channel
VGA,
PS/2, SD,
flash - 127$


I'd avoid the older parts (Cyclone II and III) since those may not be
supported in future versions of the Altera toolchain. The same might
apply to the Spartan 3E, though I'm not as familiar with that.

Theo, I think you've underestimated how aggressively both X and A have
been pruning their old silicon from the latest tools. Xilinx Vivado has
no support for anything other than 7 series parts, ISE has been moved to
"sustaining". Altera Quartus II, likewise, has dropped support for even
the Cyclone III from the 14.x branch.

So, of the OP's list, the Artix-7, Z-7010, and Cyclone V still have the
full support of their vendors. The rest already have the gold pen for
all they've done, the cardboard box on their desks, and security standing
over their shoulders.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com
Email address domain is currently out of order. See above to fix.

 

[Mike Field]

Hi,


> Basys(tm)2 - Xilinx Spartan-3E, 8-bit VGA, PS/2 - 69$

Don't do it - ver old, very small, on-board XTAL is junk.

> Basys(tm)3 - Xilinx Artix-7, 12-bit VGA, USB host for kb/mice, flash -
79$
Nice board, I have one - great for FPGA tinkering, not so good for embedded MCU as it has no off-FPGA memory.

> miniSpartan6+ - Spartan 6 LX 9, HDMI, serial flash, microSD - 75$

Nice board, I have one too - HDMI In and Out, which is rather unique at the price point. LX9 is quite small, and the SDRAM RAM bandwidth is quite low for playing with video streams. I don't think that you can use the on-board memory with EDK projects, so it isn't a good platform for embedded development. You will need a soldering iron to add any other peripherals other than the basic on board set.

> ZYBO Zynq(tm)-7000 - Xilinx Z-7010, Cortex-A9, flash, memory, SD, USB,
gigabit
Ethernet, HDMI, 16-bit VGA - 125$

I've got it's big brother, the Zedboard and it is great. I quite like the look of the Zybo and would consider it if I didn't have a Zedboard.

> Altera DE0 Board - Altera Cyclone III 3C16, 4-BIT VGA, SD, serial port,
PS/2,
flash - 81$

Have not used, but I assume that it is only still available to be compatible with existing coursework

http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?...
> Altera DE0-CV Board - Altera Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N, 4-bit VGA, microSD,
PS/2 -
99$
Newer, bigger FPGA, with much more memory than the old DE0. I would recommend it as the Altera board for learning FPGA design on.

> Altera DE1 Board - Altera Cyclone II 2C20, 4-bit R-2R per channel VGA,
PS/2, SD,
flash - 127$

Very old FPGA, but has lots of goodies to play with (e.g. SDRAM+FLASH+SRAM, audio codec...). I also assume that it is only still available to be compatible with existing reference material.

If you are interested in embedded Linux, then also look at the DE1-SoC Board. I've go one on my desk at work at the moment and it is quite nice. It is an approximate match for the Zybo.

If I was spending my own money, I'ld go for a Zybo (if interested in Embedded Linux) or a Basys3 (if primarily interested in FPGA logic design). But then I guess I am a bit of a Xilinx fanboy as that is what I learnt on.

Mike

 

[FrewCen]

THANK YOU ALL for this discussion, you helped a lot.
I have chosen Altera Cyclone IV on a different (Arduino-like) board, sinc
that comes easier for me, but if I ever come to a larger chunk of mone
again, I'll go for the processor directly on-board.

Thank you all again.
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