FPGA board

Altera_Forum · ‎12-08-2009

Hi everyone!,

First of all, I'm new to the forum. I've tried searching for what I was looking for but didn't find it. I thank you for reading my subject.

I'm currently developing an FPGA board for a small company (I’m doing my memoir for them). I’m planning to do this board to implements many kinds of operations. One of these would be to do a simulation of the machines of a paper factory (and find the bests possibility to reduce the peak consumption). This is actually done on Matlab and Simulink but the simulation is huge and takes a lot of time so the idea would to implement it on a embedded FPGA.

So why not using an existing kit you may ask? Because I would like to choose my own I/O interfaces and choose my components myself.

So here is what I would like on my board:

-An FPGA : I choose the EP3C40F484. The EP3C25 of the Altera development kit seemed to work pretty well, I choose Cyclone 3 just above it which has almost twice M9K blocs, Ram and multipliers.

-Additional RAM (DDR, SSRAM)

-Flash memory

-Interfaces: PC-104 (8bits) , Ethernet, RS-232

I know this is not going to be easy and I’ve been studying this for quite a few weeks now. I have some questions:

-I know this is depending on I’m going to do. But how do I know if the FPGA I choose has enough logic elements?

-Can a FPGA handle all these interfaces easily? (I know I’ll have to do some voltage readjustments)

If you have any interesting links or suggestions, I’m very thankful for posting them here.

Phil

Altera_Forum · ‎12-08-2009

1 - It's difficult to know if the FPGA you've selected is "big enough" (has enough logic elements). That depends entirely on what you are going to do with it. Typically what I do is try some test projects first with what I think is a fair representation of the amount of logic I'll be using and make my decision based on that.

2 - The FPGA should be handle all of the interfaces you've listed. You will of course need external components to support ethernet and RS-232.

Are you sure you don't want to use a dev kit? Like this one:

http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyc3-starter.html

You could just create your own mezzanine board and connect it through the HSMC (available from Samtec).

Jake

Altera_Forum · ‎12-09-2009

I would go for the development kit too. Developing a full PCB with an FPGA is very time consuming, and not really worth it for a one-shot project in my opinion.

You can add the I/O you want through a daughtercard, as Jake said, or even use a prototype board, such as the one sold by Bitec: http://www.bitec-dsp.com/hsmc_proto.html

Altera_Forum · ‎12-10-2009

Thanks for your quick answer!

I thought about using a daughter card, but there are a few reasons why I don’t want to do it right now. The company I work for produces embedded devices of certain size and shapes; I want to make a board of the same size.

An other reason is that one of the application I'm going to implement is going to take roughly 15 000 LEs. I made a rough estimation, it is right now in Simulink and I used DSP builder to make this estimation. Knowing there might be other things running (NIOS 2, PC104 interface ect) 25 000 like on this board might be a little short. So this is why I’m going for the EP3C40.

Now what I'm doing is research and sees if this is possible. If the board I'm planning to make does not work, I’ll probably go for the daughter card.

Altera_Forum · ‎12-10-2009

My goal is to have a plateform tha can be used for many applications, I only have one right now but this could be used in other projects.

I currently have the Altera Nios 2 embedded Evalutaion Kit (C3 edition) with the card you are showing. I'm working with an other person who is trying to find a way to convert all the Simulink into an HDL. So if my board doesnt work I can still go for your solution.