Getting into FPGAs, looking for board, 400k gates?

[sixtyfivebit]

delta sigma pico

Hey everyone,

I'm getting into FPGAs and I've been looking for a board. For a while I was convinced that the Spartan-3 Starter Pack (for $99) was the perfect choice, as it not only has the FPGA dev board and stuffs, but also came with the CPLD board.

However, I can't find it in stock anywhere (Xilinx says its out of stock through them) except for Trenz Electronic, where its going for 119 euros, and that price in USD with shipping is easily over 150.

So then I looked at the Spartan-3E kit, which is $149, available at Avnet, comes with the coolrunner CPLD onboard, and has 500k gates.

Although my goal is essentially to learn and practice digital logic design on FPGAs, and neat IP cores like Microblaze don't really concern me, I think I might want the functionality for later. Plus, if I can't get that $99 kit anyway, why not get the 300k more gates if forced to pay for the available dev kit?

I'll just sum up my questions:
Do the Xilinx branded dev kits hold any worth-it advantage over third party boards, say by Xess or something?
Also I read that you want to aim for 400k gates or above to get microblaze and other goodies running... is this true?
And of course, the best vague question, what other boards do you recommend (under $150) with a Xilinx FPGA?

Thanks, sixtyfivebit.

Added after 1 hours 10 minutes:

Nevermind all that, I think I'm going to go with the Altium LiveDesign kit. I'll choose the Xilinx Spartan 3 version with 1000k gates.

Does anybody know anything about the board that is included wiht the $99 Altium LiveDesign kit? I can't find any description of it on the site...

Thanks, sixtyfivebit.

 

[EDALIST]

the advantage in using xilinx board are :

1. better design (layout) enabling you to use the device in high speed designs.
2. xilinx board have more capabilities, and more adequate to support latest xilinx cores (like 32 bit DDR interface for example).
3. xilinx has better support with its new design tools like EDK And ISE Latest Versions.

 

[sixtyfivebit]

Thanks for the reply and advice EDALIST, but do you know where to find it in stock for its retail price ($99)?

Thanks, sixtyfivebit.

 

[samcheetah]

i currently own the altium livedesign evaluation kit with an XC3S400. now the kit comes with XC3S1000 and they have also changed their software, first it was altium DXP 2004 and now its called altium designer.

the problem with the altium kit is that the software that comes with it only has a 30 day trial. the software is actually ultra super duper cool but once you start liking it, the 30 day trial ends . with the altium kit you will still need xilinx ISE because altium's software cant do MAP and PAR. and once the trial period ends you will be able to program the FPGA using xilinx ISE's utility called iMPACT. in summary i would say that the altium kit is a really good thing to buy but if you are buying the kit then please do consider the spartan 3e kit because it has alot more to offer than the altium kit. the 3e kit also has ethernet onboard and it has all kinds of memory onboard. you can really do alot more with the 3e kit than with the altium kit.

as for your question about where to find it, well you havent filled in your location in your profile so i cant say anything. but if you just go to altium's site and search for a dealer in your country, you will find what you are finding for.

i hope that helps

 

[sixtyfivebit]

samcheetah, thanks for the advice. I guess I should stick with Xilinx as both you and EDALIST have pointed out the long-term advantages.

The ethernet interface on the Spartan 3E board (from Xilinx) sounds interesting, and the chip has 500k gates, and I guess that's plenty for implementing some of those bigger neat cores. I think I'll go in that direction, but I'm still looking around.

 

[samcheetah]

while you are looking around ill give you a round up of both altium's kit and the 3e kit

the altium kit has

On-board high-capacity Xilinx Spartan 3 (XC3S1000) FPGA
Dual 256Kx16-bit FPGA configurable high-speed static RAM
Audio system, Delta Sigma stereo DAC with user-adjustable corner frequency
Dual (stereo) miniature speakers with volume control
Audio line out and headphone 2.5-mm jacks with volume control
6 Digit 7-segment LED display
Fixed 50-MHz clock
RS232 serial port
VGA port
PS2 Mini DIN mouse port
PS2 Mini DIN PC keyboard port
8-way DIP switch
LED array, 8 LEDs
Dual 20-pin I/O expansion headers with power supply selection links
User-defined TEST/RESET button

whereas the 3e kit has

Spartan-3E (XC3S500E-4FG320C)
CoolRunner™-II (XC2C64A-5VQ44C)
Platform Flash (XCF04S-VO20C) (No Platform Flash in the altium board)
50 MHz crystal clock oscillator
128 Mbit Parallel Flash (not in the altium kit)
16 Mbit SPI Flash (not in the altium kit)
64 MByte DDR SDRAM (you can even run linux on the board with DDR RAM)
Ethernet 10/100 Phy (not in the altium kit)
JTAG USB download
Two 9-pin RS-232 Serial Port
PS/2- style mouse/keyboard port
rotary encoder with push button (not in the altium kit)
Four Slide Switches
Eight Individual LED Outputs
Four Momentary-Contact Push Buttons
100-Pin hirose Expansion Connection Ports
Three 6-pin expansion connectors
16 character - 2 Line LCD (not included in the altium kit)

so all in all, the 3e kit is much better than the altium kit, that is if you are willing to pay the extra $49

 

[artem]

samcheetah, may be i am wrong , this page (https://www.altera.com/products/devkits/partners/kit-alt-live-design.html#contents) mentions EP1C12F324C8 not XC3S1000. Are you talking in terms of equalent capabilities ?

I am newbie in fpga field so excuse me for possible mistake in my question - although vga connector is in place in livedesign its ram is limited to 512 kB. It should not allow to test vga controller with onboard ram for resolution let say 1024x1280, but spartan3E seems capable of doing that . Am i right ? This question is important as i am going to buy one SDK for design where VGA ethernet and possibly pico or microblaze core will be used.

Thanks

 

[Matrix_YL]

I think one thing should be take into consideration.Xilinx Spartan-3e Starter kit use USB Cable directly.
and spartan 3e familys is good for DSP application !

 

[samcheetah]

artem, the altium kit comes either with an XC3S1000-4FG456C or an EP1C12F324C8. its up to you whether you want the board with a xilinx device or an altera device. for more info go to **broken link removed**

yes you are right, the altium kit doesnt have that much RAM. if you use the BlockRAMs of the FPGA that might help but maybe you would need the BlockRAMs for some other IP core. anyway, the 3e kit looks like a more better choice.

 

[artem]

thanks for reply.

Do you know or can you roughly estimate whether it is possible to fit microblaze vga controller and ethernet into spartan3E fpga? From another forum i have heard that microblaze takes much resources in 500K fpga, but using picoblaze also has its own drawbacks due to absence of c compiler .
Or may it be possible to find small and proven core?

I appologize for offtopic , hope my questions are somehow related to topic objectives.

 

[samcheetah]

im not sure if you can have all these in a 500K 3E device. if all you want to do is drive the VGA core then you should use picoblaze (just 96 slices). i agree that the absense of a C compiler for picoblaze is a real pain. but there is a solution to this problem and that is the PB8051 which is an emulation of the 8051 on a picoblaze. with that core you can use any 8051 c compiler. but PB8051 is $495 (really expensive)

i think you should try to add all those cores in the FPGA. maybe they will fit in!!!!!!

 

[artem]

I have searched around picoblaze and found that someone succeded to write compiler (very preliminary) and it is possible to download and test it :
**broken link removed**
**broken link removed**
**broken link removed**

 

[samcheetah]

yes, but thats why i didnt tell you about it. its a very preliminary version.

but you can try it and tell me how it is

 

[artem]

i have just ordered the spar3e sdk - and there is 6 weeks to wait)