Sensible starter FPGA board

T

Thomas Womack

Guest
Is http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=60002 a sensible
thing to buy as an introduction to working with FPGAs? If not, can
you recommend anything else at the same kind of price with no-charge
development tools?

The parallax board seems to be reasonably priced, has a Stratix core
so you get the DSP components and the large memories, lots of header
pins to connect to externals (DRAM is presumably impractical on a
breadboard, for signal-integrity reasons and the difficulty of putting
184-pin sockets on a breadboard if nothing else, but I can't see why
SRAM and an ADC or DAC wouldn't work).

Is it at all conceivable to get VGA out of something like that, or
would the signals degrade hopelessly on their way from the headers
to the 15-pin plug for the monitor?

Tom
 
http://www.xess.com/

Has some very nice inexpensive platforms. These are used for
universities, colleges, and schools. They are inexpensive enough that a
student can buy a simple one for about the price of a textbook.

Austin

Thomas Womack wrote:
Is http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=60002 a sensible
thing to buy as an introduction to working with FPGAs? If not, can
you recommend anything else at the same kind of price with no-charge
development tools?

The parallax board seems to be reasonably priced, has a Stratix core
so you get the DSP components and the large memories, lots of header
pins to connect to externals (DRAM is presumably impractical on a
breadboard, for signal-integrity reasons and the difficulty of putting
184-pin sockets on a breadboard if nothing else, but I can't see why
SRAM and an ADC or DAC wouldn't work).

Is it at all conceivable to get VGA out of something like that, or
would the signals degrade hopelessly on their way from the headers
to the 15-pin plug for the monitor?

Tom
Click to expand...
 
In article <c0hjkr$dqg$05$1@news.t-online.com>,
Antti Lukats <antti@case2000.com> wrote:
"Austin Lesea" <austin@xilinx.com> wrot

http://www.xess.com/

Has some very nice inexpensive platforms. These are used for
universities, colleges, and schools. They are inexpensive enough that a
student can buy a simple one for about the price of a textbook.

you better re-check XESS offerings, as ASFAIK they have dropped __all__ low
cost Xilinx boards.
Click to expand...
No, according to http://www.xess.com/ho04000.php3 you can still get a XC2S50
or XC2S100 board for $149 or $249 respectively. Or are you claiming they
just keep the Web site up to mislead passing travellers?

The difference between the XESS and the Parallax board is basically the choice
between interesting peripherals and on-board large memories and multipliers;
whilst DSP trickery sounds fun, I suspect it would probably be more sensible
to get the board with peripherals to start with.

Tom
 
"Austin Lesea" <austin@xilinx.com> wrote in message
news:c0h575$a6f1@cliff.xsj.xilinx.com...
http://www.xess.com/

Has some very nice inexpensive platforms. These are used for
universities, colleges, and schools. They are inexpensive enough that a
student can buy a simple one for about the price of a textbook.

Austin
Click to expand...
Austin,

you better re-check XESS offerings, as ASFAIK they have dropped __all__ low
cost Xilinx boards.

Antti
 
Thomas Womack <twomack@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in
news:Hxu*DCYcq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:

In article <c0hjkr$dqg$05$1@news.t-online.com>,
Antti Lukats <antti@case2000.com> wrote:
"Austin Lesea" <austin@xilinx.com> wrot

http://www.xess.com/

Has some very nice inexpensive platforms. These are used for
universities, colleges, and schools. They are inexpensive enough
that a student can buy a simple one for about the price of a
textbook.

you better re-check XESS offerings, as ASFAIK they have dropped
__all__ low cost Xilinx boards.

No, according to http://www.xess.com/ho04000.php3 you can still get a
XC2S50 or XC2S100 board for $149 or $249 respectively. Or are you
claiming they just keep the Web site up to mislead passing travellers?
Click to expand...
Yes, we continue to make and sell these boards and will for at least a
few more years. Last year we halted production of some boards based on
the older XC9500 CPLDs and XC4000XL FPGAs after the boards passed their
five-year product lifetime.

The difference between the XESS and the Parallax board is basically
the choice between interesting peripherals and on-board large memories
and multipliers; whilst DSP trickery sounds fun, I suspect it would
probably be more sensible to get the board with peripherals to start
with.
Click to expand...
You can always use distributed arithmetic to commit DSP trickery.
Multipliers are sexy and easier to use right out of the box, but DA is
still a handy technique to know and understand.

Tom
Click to expand...


--
|| Dr. Dave Van den Bout XESS Corp. (919) 363-4695 ||
|| devb@xess.com PO Box 33091 ||
|| http://www.xess.com Raleigh NC 27636 USA FAX:(919) 367-2946 ||
 
You could try http://www.stratforddigital.ca/products/sputnik/

James Momrrison
Hardware Designer
NDI
103 Randall Drive
Waterloo, ON, Canada N2V 1C5
Telephone: +1 (519) 884-5142
Toll Free: +1 (877) 634-6340
Global: ++ (800) 634-634-00
Facsimile: +1 (519) 884-5184
Website: www.ndigital.com
 
There are many tricks that can be done to reduce the reliance on
multipliers. One of the big things is to run the clock, not at your sample
rate, but at the largest multiple of the sample rate you can muster. Doing
that, you can take advantage of iterative or bit serial techniques rather
than having to depend on fully parallel arithmetic running at far below its
capability. Even with the chips that have the dedicated multipliers, I use
this philosophy, and more often than not have plenty of multipliers in the
design that don't use the dedicated ones. Distributed arithmetic is just
one of the available tricks, although it is a quite powerful one.

Dave Vanden Bout wrote:

Thomas Womack <twomack@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in
news:Hxu*DCYcq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk:

In article <c0hjkr$dqg$05$1@news.t-online.com>,
Antti Lukats <antti@case2000.com> wrote:
"Austin Lesea" <austin@xilinx.com> wrot

http://www.xess.com/

Has some very nice inexpensive platforms. These are used for
universities, colleges, and schools. They are inexpensive enough
that a student can buy a simple one for about the price of a
textbook.

you better re-check XESS offerings, as ASFAIK they have dropped
__all__ low cost Xilinx boards.

No, according to http://www.xess.com/ho04000.php3 you can still get a
XC2S50 or XC2S100 board for $149 or $249 respectively. Or are you
claiming they just keep the Web site up to mislead passing travellers?

Yes, we continue to make and sell these boards and will for at least a
few more years. Last year we halted production of some boards based on
the older XC9500 CPLDs and XC4000XL FPGAs after the boards passed their
five-year product lifetime.


The difference between the XESS and the Parallax board is basically
the choice between interesting peripherals and on-board large memories
and multipliers; whilst DSP trickery sounds fun, I suspect it would
probably be more sensible to get the board with peripherals to start
with.

You can always use distributed arithmetic to commit DSP trickery.
Multipliers are sexy and easier to use right out of the box, but DA is
still a handy technique to know and understand.


Tom

--
|| Dr. Dave Van den Bout XESS Corp. (919) 363-4695 ||
|| devb@xess.com PO Box 33091 ||
|| http://www.xess.com Raleigh NC 27636 USA FAX:(919) 367-2946 ||
Click to expand...
--
--Ray Andraka, P.E.
President, the Andraka Consulting Group, Inc.
401/884-7930 Fax 401/884-7950
email ray@andraka.com
http://www.andraka.com

"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-Benjamin Franklin, 1759
 
"Thomas Womack" <twomack@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote in message
news:qGi*MtWcq@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
Is http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=60002 a sensible
thing to buy as an introduction to working with FPGAs? If not, can
you recommend anything else at the same kind of price with no-charge
development tools?

The parallax board seems to be reasonably priced, has a Stratix core
so you get the DSP components and the large memories, lots of header
pins to connect to externals (DRAM is presumably impractical on a
breadboard, for signal-integrity reasons and the difficulty of putting
184-pin sockets on a breadboard if nothing else, but I can't see why
SRAM and an ADC or DAC wouldn't work).

Is it at all conceivable to get VGA out of something like that, or
would the signals degrade hopelessly on their way from the headers
to the 15-pin plug for the monitor?

Tom
Click to expand...
www.digilentinc.com

something like D2E + DIO1 boards
The board has vga out.Haven't tried vga on mine yet.

https://digilent.us/Sales/Product.cfm?Prod=D2E-DIO1

Or whatever their newest equivalent is.
D2SB + DIO5
https://digilent.us/Sales/Product.cfm?Prod=D2FT-DIO5

OR if a smaller fpga is fine
https://digilent.us/Sales/Product.cfm?Prod=PEGASUS

Looks like they are finally getting
the boards out they've been talking about for a while.

Pity they went for 6 pin for the jtag.If it had been 20 pin, could
have made it a debugger(for micros) as well.


Or the other one is http://www.burched.com.au/
http://www.burched.biz/b5xsvp.html

Wonder when his Altera board is going to be out ?




Alex
 
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