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Yet another "what would you buy" question

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sph3r3

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Hi,

I would like to buy a development board for home hobby use. I am interested in SoC, DSP and SDR. Some of the old-computer-system-on-chip projects on the internet (e.g. Atari ST, Amiga 500) also look interesting. I might have to try something similar :)

I am considering between the Terasic DE2-70 (Cyclone 2) and Digilent XUP-V2P (Virtex2 pro) systems. With academic discount they both end up about the same price. The main differences are:
- Cyclone 2 has about 2x the number of LUTs but Virtex2 pro has 2x the amount of memory.
- Virtex2 pro has inbuilt powerpc core.
- XUP-V2P has DDR2 DIMM slot. DE2-70 has 2x32MB SDRAM chips soldered on (not as big, not as fast).
- DE2-70 has more peripherals: better VGA DAC, TV decoder is built-in (is expansion module for XUP), USB is for host/slave (not just configuration), IrDA.
- XUP has more expansion sockets.
- Both boards have expandable flash (SD on DE2, CF on XUP), both boards have 10/100 ethernet, PS/2, RS232. audio in/out.

Can also add an off-the-shelf DAC/ADC module to the DE2. The ADC expansion for the XUP is much lower in bandwidth.

If you were in my position what would you buy, and why? Or would you buy something else?

Can you give me examples of the sort of projects that have been implemented on these boards? Would I be mad to expect either of them to do real-time software radio?

Thanks,
Sph3r3
 

I think you calculate every thing next step is to take decision
But you did not mentioned Camera, LCD compliant to DE boards
If you want to learn SOC then I will favour DE2 using book Rapid Prototyping of Digital Systems: SOPC Edition
You will get allot of aid form this book
 

The question for me is another, what you'll use to develop your project?
If you use Altera Quartus II or Xilinx ISE the question is very rilevant, whereas if you use a 3rd party tool it's not of relevance.

For me I'll prefere Altera tool (more simple to use and faster) and if you've external memory you can use that (so internal one is not a big problem), moreover if you need an internal CPU also with altera you can configure your NIOS cpu with the peripherical you wanna.
 

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