FPGA, SoC, And CPLD Boards And Kits
FPGA Evaluation and Development Kits
5892 Discussions

Looking for high speed benchmark test for the Stratix IV FPGA Dev Kit

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
1,039 Views

I see that the Stratix IV GX development kit with EP4SGX230KF40C2N FPGA is compliant to PCI Express 2.0 x8 (eight lane). Given that each PCIe 2.0 lane can transfer 500 MB/s, eight lanes in aggregate should be able to transfer 4 GB/s (yes, Giga Bytes per second). Therefore, I'm assuming that this means that the development board/FPGA can receive data at this rate (4 GB/s).  

 

Questions: 

1. Is the above a correct assumption?  

2. Are there any benchmark studies (white papers, etc.) illustrating actual 

high-speed data transfer rates (please send a link)? 

3. Is there a PCIe "core license" I need to purchase? 

4. Is there a particular Quartus license I need to purchase (and what's the  

cost)?  

 

I need feedback before I make a purchase for my group. 

 

 

Thanks, 

 

Eric J. Harris 

Electronics Engineer 

NASA GSFC 

301-286-3439 

eric.j.harris@nasa.gov
0 Kudos
3 Replies
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
329 Views

The PCI-E resource center on Altera's website: 

http://www.altera.com/support/ip/interface-protocols/ips-inp-pcie.html?gsa_pos=2&wt.oss_r=1&wt.oss=pci%20express 

 

The achievable bandwidth is highly dependent on your design. This reference design document has some benchmark results with explanations about bandwidth calculations and theoretical limits: 

http://www.altera.com/literature/an/an456.pdf 

 

Jake
0 Kudos
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
329 Views

Oh and as far as licensing the cores and software, talk to your local Altera sales rep. 

 

Jake
0 Kudos
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor II
329 Views

Perfect, just the information I was looking. 

 

Thanks Jake, 

 

Eric
0 Kudos
Reply