Choosing FPGA trainer KIT

[blooz]

PLease Help

I am Newbie to FPGA based design ....I intent to buy one kit for our Academic project work in embedded systems RISC core .and IMage compression

which KIt to choose
1.Diligent Atlys
2.Nexsys
3.basys
currently working with Aldec Active HDL .....

Do the kits come with protective box or we have to buy?
what's the opinion about Altera DE2 ...
Which will be a better option atlys or altera de2

 

[Scrts]

Check the tools first of all! Xilinx software is quite buggy and annoying.

 

[blooz]

Check the tools first of all! Xilinx software is quite buggy and annoying.

is altera better option

 

[Scrts]

In my opinion - yes. Why? Because I have Spartan-3E Starter Kit, have experienced coregen bugs, MIG suckness and the most wonderful part when You update the tools and previous design doesn't synthesize... Take a look at DE1-DE3 series of boards.

 

[blooz]

In my opinion - yes. Why? Because I have Spartan-3E Starter Kit, have experienced coregen bugs, MIG suckness and the most wonderful part when You update the tools and previous design doesn't synthesize... Take a look at DE1-DE3 series of boards.

yes that's an important aspect ,so Atera de series has an upper hand

---------- Post added at 21:22 ---------- Previous post was at 21:19 ----------

Is the Quartus from Altera complete enough to cover all aspets of design....I currently program in verilog using aldec Active HDL

 

[Scrts]

Yes. Download the newest Quartus Web Edition and do some tests/designs. They also give ModelSim Altera Starter Edition with Quartus package afaik, but seems like You don't need it.

 

[blooz]

thank a lots ...

 

[_pv]

I am Newbie to FPGA based design ....I intent to buy one kit for our Academic project work in embedded systems RISC core .and IMage compression
Do the kits come with protective box or we have to buy?

Also have a look on BeMicro or BeMicro-SDK.

 

[Scrts]

I have BeMicro board... When I got it, it was very badly documented and almost no examples... Dunno how it is now, but I believe the same? BeMicro-SDK is more to consider, however its price is almost reaching DE1 price. Plus You need expansion board for BeMicro to do something useful. And finally, BeMicro is made to use for softcore development, so don't take away a joy of doing digital design in logic only

 

[_pv]

I have BeMicro board... When I got it, it was very badly documented and almost no examples... Dunno how it is now, but I believe the same? BeMicro-SDK is more to consider, however its price is almost reaching DE1 price. Plus You need expansion board for BeMicro to do something useful. And finally, BeMicro is made to use for softcore development, so don't take away a joy of doing digital design in logic only

Well, Bemicro-SDK looks much better, it is Cyclone IV, it has ethernet, 64MByte sdram, and at least full schematics are available , and it still costs half of de1 price.
So i'm for sure going to get one

 

[Scrts]

EBV offers Cyclone IV GX board with PCI-e, DDR2 and 32 pins I/O (available to buy 2 expansions, either 2xRS232 + smth I can't remember or 2x1Gb ethernet), costs only 100EU.

 

[YuLongHuang]

I recommand that you could buy Altera DE2 or DE2-70 with software Quartus II and NIOS II. There are educational kits for Terasic such that it's friendly to new user. It contains control panel which can control the board directly by host. And there are a lot of example codes for reference on Altera forum and Internet. The only one drawback for above is that it's just a educational kits which means it's not powerful compared to other commerical version. Good luck!

 

[blooz]

I recommand that you could buy Altera DE2 or DE2-70 with software Quartus II and NIOS II. There are educational kits for Terasic such that it's friendly to new user. It contains control panel which can control the board directly by host. And there are a lot of example codes for reference on Altera forum and Internet. The only one drawback for above is that it's just a educational kits which means it's not powerful compared to other commerical version. Good luck!

Yes this is true and Altera De2 seems impressive compared to others in same class

 

[blooz]

Please Compare the Two Boadrs and give a suggestion

1.Nexys Board
Features offered by Distributor in india


Features

* Xilinx FPGA
o Spartan-3E XC3S500E-4FG320
* Memory
o Xilinx Platform Flash
o 16MB fast Micron SDRAM
o 6MB Intel StrataFlash Flash
* Connectivity
o USB2 port providing board power, device configuration, and high-speed data transfers
o High-speed Hirose FX2 connector
o Three 6 pin Expansion Connectors
o VGA, RS232 and PS/2 ports
* Other
o 50MHz oscillator, plus a socket for a user oscillator
o Eight LEDs
o Four Seven Segment Display’s
o Eight Slide Switches and four push buttons

for Rs 11,000.....

then De1 Board
the price is 10,500
FPGA
Altera Cyclone II 2C20 FPGA with 20000 LEs with Serial
- Configuration device (EPCS4) for Cyclone II 2C20
Memory
8 Mbyte (1M x 4 x 16) SDRAM
512 Kbyte(256Kx16) SRAM
4 Mbyte Flash Memory
Clock
50MHz, 24MHz, 27MHz oscillators and external clock sources
Peripherals & Connectors
4 Push-button switches
10 DPDT Switches
8 Green User LEDs
10 Red User LEDs
4 Seven-segment LED displays
RS-232 Transceiver and 9-pin connector
PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector
SD Card Socket
24-bit CD-Quality Audio CODEC with line-in, line-out, and microphone-in
VGA DAC (4-bit R-2R per channel) with VGA out connector
USB Blaster built in on board for programming and user API controlling
JTAG Mode and AS Mode are supported
Two 40-pin Expansion Headers with diode protection

For DE2 they say Rs 24,500
with Folowing features
FPGA
Altera Cyclone II 2C35 FPGA with 35000 LEs with Serial
- Configuration device (EPCS16) for Cyclone II 2C35
Memory
8 Mbyte (1M x 4 x 16) SDRAM
512 Kbyte(256K X16) SRAM
4 Mbyte Flash Memory
Clock
50MHz Oscillator and 27MHz Oscillator for external clock sources
Peripherals & Connectors
4 Push-button switches
18 DPDT switches
9 Green User LEDs
18 Red User LEDs
16 x 2 LCD Module
RS-232 Transceiver and 9-pin connector
PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector
IrDA transceiver
SD Card Socket
24-bit CD-Quality Audio CODEC with line-in, line-out & microphone-in
VGA DAC (10-bit high-speed triple DACs) with VGA out connector
TV Decoder (NTSC/PAL) and TV in connector
10/100 Ethernet Controller with socket.
USB Host/Slave Controller with USB type A and type B connectors
USB Blaster built in on board for programming and user API controlling
JTAG Mode and AS Mode are supported
Two 40-pin Expansion Headers with diode protection

Which one is better either Nexys or DE1 or DE2 At reasonable price We are Developing ann embedded System with Multimedia Application .....
money is a constraint.....

Current exchange rate aroung 45-46 Rs per Dollar ......

 

[Scrts]

I would go for DE1 because of software, not hardware. Also check if You could find anything cheapo for Spartan-6

 

[patweadock]

I bought one of these (The Cyclone IV version) and also bought a few 80 pin connectors for the card edge connection (from Samtec). I went thru the labs supplied in the download, It is certainly a fascinating device. I want to make an expansion board and develope an AC servo controller with 3 sine LUTs and using "carry out" from counters to generate 3 phase PWM. NiosII is pretty awesome, but you can't really "use" it without a license, so I've been trolling the Opencores.org site looking for a viable embedded processor design. I'm really hoping that more people will buy the bemicro and share their experiences. I think it's a great device because of the cost, useability (stick form factor), and board resources. Also, as mentioned here, Altera has better IDEs and support.

 

[Scrts]

Isn't the most simple version of Nios is free?

 

[patweadock]

All of the 3 NiosII versions can be experimented with, as long as your device is tethered to your PC. Once you disconnect it, the processor "expires" in about an hour. If you have a license you can permanently flash your code to your device. But no, there are no free versions of the NiosII.

 

[Alexium]

I'd like to put my two cents in: I worked with Xilinx Spartan-3E starter kit board. And, of course, Xilinx ISE software. I think it's quite good. The software is just a little bit buggy and a little bit annoying. Oh, and I used different versions - 8 through 12, never having a problem with backwards compability.

 

[patweadock]

I certainly wasn't trying to trash Xilinx, there's a few things I like better (than Altera) about there product model and dev boards - more friendly to hobbyists (IMHO), but I do think the Altera IDE (Quartus II 10.1) is better. Maybe I didn't look deep enough. Does xilinx ISE have an Embedded 32 bit processor (NIOS II)? and an IDE to develope software for the processor (Eclipse)? Can you view the topology of the chip and see where it physicaly assigned the hardware? Do they have a virtual logic probe to view signal simulation at any point in the circuit(Micrium Uc probe)? These are just some of the things I value with Altera, and I really don't know if Xilinx has these features.