Twice the device EP2S60 Stratix II kit

Altera_Forum · ‎03-19-2005

Altera was running a "Twice the deveice" promotion at the begining of the year. It suppose in effective for 1st quarter of 05. Does anyone know how to order through this promotion? I can't find any information on altera website anymore.

Altera_Forum · ‎03-25-2005

I do not know if the offer is still active, but since we have purchased it and we faced a pretty ugly surprise I want to let you know also.

The offered EP2S60 device is a BUGGY engineering sample! Furthermore there are no workarrounds to the bugs! You just have to live with them! Altera did not mention it anywhere, not even after placing the order just to give a chance to the customer to decide. We found out about the situation only after receiving the kit, observing the ES suffix on the device, and performing some Altera site search about EP2S60 engineering samples.

So, if the offer is still active take care before placing an order.

Altera_Forum · ‎03-25-2005

Anagonost,

It was my belief that this was always disclosed... Anyways that is part of the reason for offering the larger device; any limitations in the ES chip are made up for by giving a much larger device for the same cost.

Altera always publishes a detailed errata document for engineering sample devices describing what is not supported. For the 2S60ES, M-RAM memory where byte enables are used is one item, and dual-ported M-RAM memories (with one or both clocks < 100Mhz) is the other. These are likely the only issues that affect Nios users. Here is the full errata:

http://www.altera.com/literature/ds/esstx2fpga.pdf (http://www.altera.com/literature/ds/esstx2fpga.pdf)

So in the end I don't think this is so bad... if you assume the worst and do not use the M-RAM in your 2S60ES at all, I contend that you are not 'losing' anything over the 2S30. Let's take the example of the Nios II Stratix II kit. This will *normally* (after the ES period) ship with a 2S30 chip. The 2S30 has one M-RAM block (64Kbytes), 144 M4K blocks (approx 72Kbytes), and about 12K of M512 blocks.. If the 2S60ES is subsititued and M-RAMs are not used at all, the 2S60ES still has about the same on-chip memory (approx 128 kbytes M4K, 20K M512) memory, plus twice the additional logic elements (which can also be used for memory in a pinch), DSP blocks PLLS, etc. My source for the above numbers is the Stratix II handbook, page 21:

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stx2/s...x2_handbook.pdf (http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/stx2/stratix2_handbook.pdf)

If this is still bothersome to you and your board is in good working order, I'd suggest contacting your Altera sales office or distributor and explain how you did not see the ES information before obtaining the kit; once the 2S30 kits are available I'd imagine they could swap for you... but in my opinion (as an engineer, not as an Altera employee) you have the better deal with the 2S60ES... I say this because I can do that many more interesting projects that fill the chip with the 2S60ES board on my desk that would be a stretch in the 2S30!.