This is more a remark than a question. I'm working for a major semiconductor company who is building various FMC/FMC+ daughter boards for prototyping and evaluation purposes.
The main goal with FMC is not just the connector, it's the actual standard too, which defines the functionality or purpose of each pin on the connector. So we can use any FPGA/MCU carrier board with any FMC daughter board. We are taking this restrictions and rules quite seriously when we're designing our daughter cards.
Currently we are trying to add support for several different boards and we are seeing that almost none of the high-end Intel FPGA carrier boards compliance the FMC standard.
E.g. All the clock dedicated pins of the FMC connector should be connected to a clock capable pin of the FPGA. Otherwise you can end up to have big problems and you will not be able to use your daughter board with that carrier.
I'm talking about boards like Arria10GX, Arria10SOC or Stratix10SOC. There is any plans to make this boards FMC compliant?
I think it would add a tremendous value to them, and would ease the system developers life. In other words it would generate more profit from everybody, starting from semicom suppliers to system companies.
Just a side note, other FPGA manufactures have boards which are much more compliant than the Intel boards, or even 100% compliant. So with a little planning and effort this can be done. :)
Regards,
-Istvan
