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Question about Spartan 3E board.

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DB51

DB51

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Hi everyone,

I would like to buy my first FPGA strarter board, I don't have any experience with FPGA.

To begin, I would like to make on FPGA a counter for analog device. Then, i would like to make a Multichannel Analyzer.

But I can't choose between Digilent Spartan 3E Starter Board and Digilent Basys2 FPGA Board. I can't decide whether I need all the features that contain Digilent Spartan 3E Starter Board. Maybe better to buy Digilent Basys2 FPGA Board. For instance, if I will decide to create a project with ADC and FPGA. I can do it with some ADC(DIP case) assembled on BreadBoard and connect all it to Digilent Basys2 FPGA Board. Perhaps in this case it will be more cheaper. To buy Digilent Basys2 FPGA Board and will buy other components when it will be necessary. In this case it will be more cheaper? And it is more useful, because, i need to think carefully how to connect the ADC and the FPGA, that it worked and etc. Or better to buy Digilent Spartan 3E Starter Board that contains a lot of features, because I don't have any experience with FPGA.

Please advise.
 
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Both the boards are good for learning purpose. I suggest you to go for the cheaper one.
 

You might also want to consider the Nexys2 from digilent. This is somewhere between the Basys2 and Spartan 3E Starter Board, both in price and features.

The Nexys2 has the same size fpga (500k gates) as the Starter Board. I guess it depends on what you want to do with it, now and later. If you are ONLY going to do the ADC thing and implement it efficiently then you can maybe get away with the 100k gates fpga on the standard Basys2. If however you see this as a board to experiment with, and the ADC thing is only the first of your experimentations, then you may want to get a board with a larger fpga.

I had much the same dillema a few years ago and decided to go with the Nexys2 and pay extra for the 1200k gates option. That way I could easily fit my first project in it, and later I had room for larger projects. If I had gone for a 100k gate device some of the later projects would not have fitted...

So I guess it becomes: buy the cheapest board that fits your current and future needs.

PS: Oh, you could try and find a place that still stocks the Avnet spartan-3a evaluation kit. That board had pretty awesome price/performance.
 
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mrflibble said:
You might also want to consider the Nexys2 from digilent. This is somewhere between the Basys2 and Spartan 3E Starter Board, both in price and features.

The Nexys2 has the same size fpga (500k gates) as the Starter Board. I guess it depends on what you want to do with it, now and later. If you are ONLY going to do the ADC thing and implement it efficiently then you can maybe get away with the 100k gates fpga on the standard Basys2. If however you see this as a board to experiment with, and the ADC thing is only the first of your experimentations, then you may want to get a board with a larger fpga.

I had much the same dillema a few years ago and decided to go with the Nexys2 and pay extra for the 1200k gates option. That way I could easily fit my first project in it, and later I had room for larger projects. If I had gone for a 100k gate device some of the later projects would not have fitted...

So I guess it becomes: buy the cheapest board that fits your current and future needs.

PS: Oh, you could try and find a place that still stocks the Avnet spartan-3a evaluation kit. That board had pretty awesome price/performance.
Click to expand...

Thanks for answers.

By the way, could you tell me please, approximately, how many gates need for simple Multichanal Analyzer, simple because only for learning purpose. And approximately what can be done with 500K gates?

In the future, I would like to learn to use other possibilities FPGA.
 

DB51 said:
Thanks for answers.

By the way, could you tell me please, approximately, how many gates need for simple Multichanal Analyzer, simple because only for learning purpose. And approximately what can be done with 500K gates?

In the future, I would like to learn to use other possibilities FPGA.
Click to expand...

It would be a bit hard for me to quantify your unknown (to me) design. Best bet: if you want to get some idea if it is going to fit, download ISE 12.4 from xilinx, enter your design, and see how many resources it takes.

This might not be the answer you were looking for, but I cannot possibly know how complex you intend to make your multichannel analyzer. If multi == 2, and analyze means "super simple trigger condition", then sure it will fit. It will even fit in 100k gates. If multi==128, and you do deep memory + complex trigger conditions, then it's a different story. So "it depends".

Hope that helps (some). ;-)
 
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DB51 said:
Thanks for answers.

By the way, could you tell me please, approximately, how many gates need for simple Multichanal Analyzer, simple because only for learning purpose. And approximately what can be done with 500K gates?

In the future, I would like to learn to use other possibilities FPGA.
Click to expand...

Any one week project and most of one month projects will fit in 500K gate.
 
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