Which Altera to buy?

On 03/12/14 13:05, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
I have had long-term goals:

(1) Visual FreePro and its compiler framework
(2) Exodus 32-bit x86-based operating system
(3) Armodus 32-bit ARM-based OS.
(4) Exodus 64-bit.
(5) Armodus 64-bit

And various other related system and user apps.

I have only discovered in the last month that I
have some natural understanding of hardware.
Until this Oppie-1 project, I had always viewed
hardware as some distant and nebulous thing.
But now that I see I have this knowledge and
ability, much to my surprise I might add, I am
moving in this way.

It's absolutely floored me to be honest. When I
began to learn Verilog, and write things, and it
all made sense, I literally walked around my
house in disbelief saying out loud, "No way!"
Click to expand...

Don't be so surprised - a basic understanding of digital logic is not
actually very difficult. I was about 12 or 13 when I learned about
boolean logic, registers, ALUs and processor design. If you are
comfortable with binary, logic operations, and assembly code (on any
cpu), then digital logic design is mostly pretty simple.

There is an "ah-ha!" moment for software programmers when they first
look at Verilog, VHDL, or other HDL's, when they realise you are mostly
describing a lot of things that happen in parallel, rather than mostly
describing a lot of things that happen serially, but you seem to have
passed that.

What is not simple, of course, is actually making something useful and
working - figuring out what you need, how to make appropriate
structures, how to manage everything, how to make the design efficient
in size and space, how to avoid races, how to fit together existing
pieces, etc. And even when you know what you are doing here, there is
massive amounts of work involved.

I am not trying to discourage you here - I am just saying that you
shouldn't think you have some "natural aptitude" here (nor am I saying
that you /don't/ have a natural aptitude - but if you do, it is not yet
apparent). You are a reasonably intelligent person, with good enough
mathematical skills and plenty of experience at assembly programming,
and lots of determination and motivation - I would have been very
surprised if you had /not/ got the hang of Verilog fairly quickly.

And in the weeks since I've looled at how the
various hardware interconnects, and it's like this
veil has been lifted and I can see the hardware
ends.

The path before me is now a combined path:

(1) LibSF 386-x40 comprised of
(2) Exodus OS,
(3) Visual FreePro, and its general IDE supporting a C-like compiler, and
(4) Other user apps

Best regards,
Ricl C. Hodgin
Click to expand...
 
On 03/12/14 13:43, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
David,

Jesus loves you. And I love you. Seek Him.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
Click to expand...

Does that mean you agree with what I wrote? Or that you disagree? Or
that you don't understand it? Or that you just don't want to think
about it?
 
On Wednesday, December 3, 2014 2:01:17 PM UTC-6, Jon Elson wrote:
rickman wrote:


I can't seem to find it now, but someone recently posted a link to
price/LUT vs size data in graph form. It gets a bit crowded at the
bottom end, but appears to show there is no real price difference
between the two brands. The data does include a very small number of
other devices than X and A, but not enough to be useful.

In fact it is interesting that the prices get very crowded at the low
end jamming up the graph. I suggested that he present the data with a
logarithmic Y axis or even in log-log form. Clearly competitive market
forces at work.

Spartan 3 is not included in the chart. In the log-log version
(THANKS, Theo!) it is clear that the Spartan 6 does VERY well against
most other types in the price/LUT.

And, Virtex 5 is just about the WORST!

You can't compare Spartan 3 vs. Spartan 6 due to the significant changes
in the LUT capacity, unless you have some kind of correction factor
to apply. I have NO IDEA how one would establish such a factor, though!

Jon
Click to expand...

Ran a number of opcores.org processor designs on Spartan 3&6, Kintex-7, Cyclone 2&4 and Arria II. ("http://opencores.org/project,up_core_list,downloads" pull "family comparison; numbers below are from a more recent version)

The LUT count averages are:
S-3: 1.46 4LUTs to one ALUT
S-6 & K-7: 1.05 6LUTs to one ALUT
C-2 & C-4: 1.58 4LUTs to one ALUT
So roughly 1.5 4LUTs per 6LUT or ALUT.

Fmax generally scales with process node

(altor32, atlas_2K-base, eco32, leros, m1_core, mblite, navre, next186, pic16c5x, pdp11-34verilob, risc5, t65 & tv80; typically 1K to 4K LUT designs)
 
rickman wrote:


I can't seem to find it now, but someone recently posted a link to
price/LUT vs size data in graph form. It gets a bit crowded at the
bottom end, but appears to show there is no real price difference
between the two brands. The data does include a very small number of
other devices than X and A, but not enough to be useful.

In fact it is interesting that the prices get very crowded at the low
end jamming up the graph. I suggested that he present the data with a
logarithmic Y axis or even in log-log form. Clearly competitive market
forces at work.
Click to expand...
The "low end" is where I live! So, I don't know about those $18,000
FPGAs, or who the heck USES them.

I know that in very small quantities, the Xilinx XC3S50A is down to
$6.12! This is pretty amazing! The non-volatile version of the
part (XC3S50AN) is $9.91.

These prices have actually come DOWN sometime this year! I have no idea
what an equivalent Altera part would cost, due to the apples vs. oranges
of different internal architecture.

Jon
 
rickman wrote:


I can't seem to find it now, but someone recently posted a link to
price/LUT vs size data in graph form. It gets a bit crowded at the
bottom end, but appears to show there is no real price difference
between the two brands. The data does include a very small number of
other devices than X and A, but not enough to be useful.

In fact it is interesting that the prices get very crowded at the low
end jamming up the graph. I suggested that he present the data with a
logarithmic Y axis or even in log-log form. Clearly competitive market
forces at work.
Click to expand...
Spartan 3 is not included in the chart. In the log-log version
(THANKS, Theo!) it is clear that the Spartan 6 does VERY well against
most other types in the price/LUT.

And, Virtex 5 is just about the WORST!

You can't compare Spartan 3 vs. Spartan 6 due to the significant changes
in the LUT capacity, unless you have some kind of correction factor
to apply. I have NO IDEA how one would establish such a factor, though!

Jon
 
Jon Elson wrote:
rickman wrote:


I can't seem to find it now, but someone recently posted a link to
price/LUT vs size data in graph form. It gets a bit crowded at the
bottom end, but appears to show there is no real price difference
between the two brands. The data does include a very small number of
other devices than X and A, but not enough to be useful.

In fact it is interesting that the prices get very crowded at the low
end jamming up the graph. I suggested that he present the data with a
logarithmic Y axis or even in log-log form. Clearly competitive market
forces at work.

Spartan 3 is not included in the chart. In the log-log version
(THANKS, Theo!) it is clear that the Spartan 6 does VERY well against
most other types in the price/LUT.

And, Virtex 5 is just about the WORST!

You can't compare Spartan 3 vs. Spartan 6 due to the significant changes
in the LUT capacity, unless you have some kind of correction factor
to apply. I have NO IDEA how one would establish such a factor, though!

Jon
Click to expand...

Sometime recently we went out for quotes on Spartan 6 and Artix 7 parts
looking for the best price for a part with 4 GTP transceivers. The
Artix-7 won that race, but the parts with fewer than 100K LE are
still hard to get. The smallest Artix 7 (and possibly cheapest
Xilinx FPGA) is the XC7A15T, which is only supported by the latest
Vivado release and looks to be 15-18 weeks out.

--
Gabor
 
Note that quite a few of the more expensive Altera eval boards ship with
"free" design tools DVD. The problem is, to actually use those design tool
you need a license which is most definitely not free (possibly severa
times more expensive than the board itself)

---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com
 
I ended up ordering this board:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=830

I was informed in email today I should receive it early next week.

I'm going to spend some time getting communication working between the
FPGA and the host computer as a debugging feature of the Oppie-1 CPU.
I will modify my Oppie-1 Debugger to receive the debug data from the
live device and display it in execution as it goes, or step-by-step,
as it does presently in the simulation.

I will also be able to send/receive updates to memory locations, change
register values, reset, restart, a true remote debugging app.

Then ... on to Oppie-2.

-----
If anyone has advice on how to get communication running most easily
on this board, I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 5:28:25 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
On 12/4/2014 12:25 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
I ended up ordering this board:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=830

If anyone has advice on how to get communication running most easily
on this board, I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

Doesn't look like you have a lot of options on this board. UART serial
to USB is the one comms choice. I thought you were going to use
Ethernet.
Click to expand...

I plan to. I won't receive the PHY board I bought until the end of
December though. If there's another option I'll use that in the time
in-between, and possible after that.

I have one of the Silicon Labs chips arriving this week, but I'll need
to get a converter from its TQFP48 form factor to something usable by
human beings. I may go ahead and do that anyway. The Silicon Labs API
is very clean and straight-forward.

http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/ethernetcontrollers/Pages/default.aspx

That seems to be another $250, wow, more than the FPGA board.
I guess you can add one via the Arduino interface for next to
nothing.
Click to expand...

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 6:06:51 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
I have one of the Silicon Labs chips arriving this week, but I'll need
to get a converter from its TQFP48 form factor to something usable by
human beings. I may go ahead and do that anyway. The Silicon Labs API
is very clean and straight-forward.

http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/ethernetcontrollers/Pages/default.aspx

I'm not keeping up with your choices. Why would you buy a chip that
isn't on a board? Why not use the Arduino interface? I'm sure you can
get Ethernet MAC modules for next to nothing.
Click to expand...

It was free. I ordered it as a sample.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
Rick C. Hodgin <rick.c.hodgin@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm going to spend some time getting communication working between the
FPGA and the host computer as a debugging feature of the Oppie-1 CPU.
I will modify my Oppie-1 Debugger to receive the debug data from the
live device and display it in execution as it goes, or step-by-step,
as it does presently in the simulation.

I will also be able to send/receive updates to memory locations, change
register values, reset, restart, a true remote debugging app.

Then ... on to Oppie-2.

-----
If anyone has advice on how to get communication running most easily
on this board, I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

There are two Altera components that might be useful:

The JTAG UART is something that looks like a UART device, but runs via JTAG
which is connected to your PC using USB. That means it's very simple to get
a text terminal up from your FPGA. It isn't a 16550-style UART, it has a
somewhat simpler interface (and if you're using a NIOS-II processor Altera's
tools generate libraries so that printf() etc works). That means you don't
need any extra hardware to get a serial port - you just run 'nios2-terminal'
on your PC and you get a console of whatever comes out of the JTAG UART.

System Console is an Altera (Java) app that allows you to get debug access
to your FPGA, assuming your FPGA uses AXI or Altera's Avalon interconnect,
which can be built with Altera's Qsys GUI tool for building systems-on-chip.
Your components have AXI or Avalon interfaces, and you join them together in
Qsys GUI (wiring up buses, interrupts, setting addresses, etc). Qsys
synthesises a network on chip for you that implements the interconnect you
wanted (so the 'buses' are actually packet switched networks). Once you've
done that you can just drop in a debug module that allows access to those
buses from System Console via JTAG via USB. In System Console on your PC
you can write TCL scripts to access memory, change peripheral registers,
etc. Since it's plugged into your existing interconnect it can access
whatever is connected to it.

In our case we have both System Console and a CPU debug unit. The debug
unit is inside the CPU and allows insertion of instructions into the
pipeline, which means we can force it to execute code to set registers etc.
We use both that mechanism and System Console to access memory. The debug
unit is implemented using a JTAG UART, but using it as a pipe to convey
debug instructions rather than as a text terminal (we have another JTAG UART
as the console).


I'd suggest first taking the example projects supplied with the board, which
use the NIOS-II CPU, and making yourself familiar with the toolchain:
Quartus compilation
Megawizard [1]
Qsys (system-on-chip generator)
NIOS-II bare-metal software world (Eclipse editor, C compiler, Board Support
Package (BSP) of drivers for the FPGA hardware)
Programming

and only then go 'off piste'. For an example, this is the FPGA practical
course that I teach that goes through the basics (from no HDL experience to
building a heterogenous multicore system-on-chip in 24 hours of lab time):
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/teaching/1415/ECAD+Arch/labs/
You don't have the same board but many of the concepts should still apply.

Theo

[1] Megawizard (a tool for configuring standalone IP blocks such as PLLs) is
being phased out and rolled into Qsys, but it's still relevant at the moment
 
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 7:17:19 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
It was free. I ordered it as a sample.
Why would you *order* a chip that isn't on a board? I have lots of
"sample" chips I've never used because they aren't on a board.
Click to expand...

I liked the API and documentation. It's a beautiful product. If I
ever create my own mainboard, I'll probably use two or three of that
component for those reasons.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
rickman writes:
I can't say I follow your reasoning. You are
using this chip which requires you to find a
board to mount it on... but just for a few
weeks. Then you will use the "PHY" that you
have ordered. Then at a latter time you will
use this chip again? Why not just stick with
this chip? Once you figure out how to mount
it where's the down side?
Click to expand...

You misunderstand because we're not having a
conversation, but only back-and-forth across a
written form where assumption and guesswork
enter in. And you already seem to have either a
natural bias against me, or are having difficulties
in understanding me, or both.

Don't worry about it though. It will all work out.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
On 12/4/2014 12:25 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
I ended up ordering this board:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=830

I was informed in email today I should receive it early next week.

I'm going to spend some time getting communication working between the
FPGA and the host computer as a debugging feature of the Oppie-1 CPU.
I will modify my Oppie-1 Debugger to receive the debug data from the
live device and display it in execution as it goes, or step-by-step,
as it does presently in the simulation.

I will also be able to send/receive updates to memory locations, change
register values, reset, restart, a true remote debugging app.

Then ... on to Oppie-2.

-----
If anyone has advice on how to get communication running most easily
on this board, I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

Doesn't look like you have a lot of options on this board. UART serial
to USB is the one comms choice. I thought you were going to use
Ethernet. That seems to be another $250, wow, more than the FPGA board.
I guess you can add one via the Arduino interface for next to nothing.

--

Rick
 
On 12/4/2014 6:00 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 5:28:25 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
On 12/4/2014 12:25 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
I ended up ordering this board:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=830

If anyone has advice on how to get communication running most easily
on this board, I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

Doesn't look like you have a lot of options on this board. UART serial
to USB is the one comms choice. I thought you were going to use
Ethernet.

I plan to. I won't receive the PHY board I bought until the end of
December though. If there's another option I'll use that in the time
in-between, and possible after that.

I have one of the Silicon Labs chips arriving this week, but I'll need
to get a converter from its TQFP48 form factor to something usable by
human beings. I may go ahead and do that anyway. The Silicon Labs API
is very clean and straight-forward.

http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/ethernetcontrollers/Pages/default.aspx
Click to expand...

I'm not keeping up with your choices. Why would you buy a chip that
isn't on a board? Why not use the Arduino interface? I'm sure you can
get Ethernet MAC modules for next to nothing.

--

Rick
 
Theo Markettos wrotes:
There are two Altera components that might
be useful...
Click to expand...

Theo, a lot of useful information. Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
On 12/4/2014 6:18 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 6:06:51 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
I have one of the Silicon Labs chips arriving this week, but I'll need
to get a converter from its TQFP48 form factor to something usable by
human beings. I may go ahead and do that anyway. The Silicon Labs API
is very clean and straight-forward.

http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/ethernetcontrollers/Pages/default.aspx

I'm not keeping up with your choices. Why would you buy a chip that
isn't on a board? Why not use the Arduino interface? I'm sure you can
get Ethernet MAC modules for next to nothing.

It was free. I ordered it as a sample.
Click to expand...

Why would you *order* a chip that isn't on a board? I have lots of
"sample" chips I've never used because they aren't on a board.

--

Rick
 
On 12/4/2014 7:24 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
On Thursday, December 4, 2014 7:17:19 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
It was free. I ordered it as a sample.
Why would you *order* a chip that isn't on a board? I have lots of
"sample" chips I've never used because they aren't on a board.

I liked the API and documentation. It's a beautiful product. If I
ever create my own mainboard, I'll probably use two or three of that
component for those reasons.
Click to expand...

I can't say I follow your reasoning. You are using this chip which
requires you to find a board to mount it on... but just for a few weeks.
Then you will use the "PHY" that you have ordered. Then at a latter
time you will use this chip again? Why not just stick with this chip?
Once you figure out how to mount it where's the down side?

--

Rick
 
On 12/4/2014 7:59 PM, Rick C. Hodgin wrote:
rickman writes:
I can't say I follow your reasoning. You are
using this chip which requires you to find a
board to mount it on... but just for a few
weeks. Then you will use the "PHY" that you
have ordered. Then at a latter time you will
use this chip again? Why not just stick with
this chip? Once you figure out how to mount
it where's the down side?

You misunderstand because we're not having a
conversation, but only back-and-forth across a
written form where assumption and guesswork
enter in. And you already seem to have either a
natural bias against me, or are having difficulties
in understanding me, or both.
Click to expand...

I don't have any bias. I read what you write. If that is not clear I
ask questions. But like this time you often don't answer them. So I am
left not knowing what is in your mind. This part of the conversation
was so disjointed that I reviewed the messages you wrote, so I'm pretty
sure I am reading it correctly.

If you don't want to discuss this with me, that's fine. If you don't
respond I'll stop asking. :)

--

Rick
 
On Friday, December 5, 2014 5:40:46 AM UTC-5, HT-Lab wrote:
I would look at Microchip's 28j60 controller, you only need a few wires
to talk to it (SPI) and there are lots of low cost eval boards available
on eBay and other places.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mini-ENC28J60-Ethernet-Network-Module-For-51-AVR-STM32-LPC-3-3V-/131299274169?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Components_Supplies_ET&hash=item1e920bedb9

Hans
www.ht-lab.com
Click to expand...

Thank you, Hans.

Best regards,
Rick C. Hodgin
 
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