Connecting two Digilent Atlys boards through the VHDCI interface

[ThusithaN]

I'm currently engaged in a video processing project and I have chosen the Atlys development board as my platform. But unfortunately the system resources offered by the board seems to be not adequate for my task. But I have two such boards for my use, and I would like to know whether it is possible to interconnect the two boards using the VHDCI expansion slot. If i can make the two FPGA's communicate and divide the tasks then the workload could be shared to create a very powerful system.

Please be kind enough to let me know if there are any restrictions in connecting the two boards with the VHDCI connector and if there any rules/protocols to be followed.

 

[joelby]

The only problems with connecting two boards in this way will be VSWT5V0 and VCCB2 voltages - you probably don't want to share these if the boards are running from separate power supplies.

Unfortunately it also doesn't look like it's possible to power one board from another through the connector, and there aren't any jumpers that disable these voltages from appearing on the VHDCI connector. If you wanted to do some surgery you could probably remove the connector, cut the power pins, and reattach it!