FPGA with PCI interface for video processing?

The free WebPack only supports up to the XC2VP4.

--
Ben Jackson

http://www.ben.com/

Tuukka Toivonen wrote: > Hi all. I'm looking for FPGA for real-time video processing. > The requirements are not yet fixed, but I think something > like Xilinx Virtex-II Pro from XC2VP7 to XC2VP30 would be > a good choice. PCI interface would be nice so that I could > plug the card in and transfer uncompressed video frames into > the card and get compressed frames back. Something like, > say 100 Mbit/s Ethernet, might also work but then it would > use pretty much all of the bandwidth.

How much do you want to spend? We actually have a board we are working on that has all these goodies, plus camera link, sdram, and a PPC. But I think you'd be looking at a few (a small few?) thousand dollars:-/

I know that Xilinx paid-for tools work on a variety of Linux distributions. Heck, I'm running 'em on an AMD64.

What sort of camera?

Even the PPC of the Virtex-IIPro can be targetted via the GNU toolchain. MonteVista has complete V2P solutions, and Denx.de has an ELDK that can readily target V2Pro.

linuxppc should work. Porting Linux to a V2P requires some software savvy because of the "unconstrained flexibility" of the solution. Personally, I'm happier with a standard PPC405 external, but hey...

The scope of what you are talking about is significant for a first time FPGA designer!

--
Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve at icarus.com           But I have promises to keep,
http://www.icarus.com         and lines to code before I sleep,
http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."

AVNET sells a Spartan3 and Virtex2p development board. Both have PCI edge-connectors.

The Spartan 3 board is ~$500 USD (XC3S1500). Unfortunately, it doesn't have any SDRAM (just 1MB of SRAM), so it's probably not suitable for video-processing.

The Virtex2p board starts at $2500 (price depends on the size of the bundled V2P FPGA.) It has 32MB SDRAM and

2MB of SRAM, which hopefully is enough to get you started! The XC2VP30-6 version is $3700 USD.

Take a lot at

for details on each kit.

(Click on "Evaluation and Development Kits", then scroll down to the "Xilinx" section. Look for "Xilinx Spartan-3 Evaluation Kit" and "Xilinx Virtex2 Pro Development Board")

Oh, don't forget you'll need to get Foundation ISE (another +$2400 ISE.) The free webpack software won't target these high-capacity FPGAs!

If you can rig-up your own I/O interface (to transfer the video data), also take a look at

I admit these are 'less likely' to fit your criteria, but you could build a system using multiple boards (1 from Avnet, another from Insight.) Insight has a few (non-PCI) FPGA-boards.

Finally, both companies have rather long 'lead times' for ordering. If you placed an order tomorrow, you'd be lucky to your FPGA boards 2-3 weeks from now (4-6 weeks is more typical.)

At least that was my experience with Avnet, 4 years ago.

Tuukka Toiv> Also, I want to do development on Linux (Debian) host,

You might try the Xlinix ML310 ATX motherboard. It has XC2VP30 with 256MB RAM, 4 PCI slots, USB,

500MB Compact Flash, IDE interface, etc.

Nice thing about this is that it boots Linux and/or Vxworks.

--You would need a board for sure, there are plenty of options, pick and choose what suits your needs and budget. Xilinx.com-->Products-->Development Boards has a nice search feature

--ISE Webpack is not a good option for this kind of work, since that only supports 2VP2 (which means no PowerPC) and does not have CoreGen either -ISE BaseX could be considered if you are going to use not bigger than

2VP7 part. That could save you some $$. -If you are going to use bigger than 2VP7 part, you need to have ISE Foundation

BaseX and Foundation both run on Linux.

--For the PowerPC development, EDK is pretty self sufficient which includes the GNU toolchain for IBM405. It does not include any RTOS (except a small Xilinx kernel, XMK). If you want to run VxWorks on PPC, you need to get that separately, ditto for other supported RTOSs'

--Other tools? --A simulator (ModelSim XE) and Chipscope Pro for in-system debugging would be good idea too.

Rgds Neeraj

[...]

Thanks for the help. I'll reply to some posts below.

From snipped-for-privacy@nowhere.net Mon Sep 20 16:53:27 2004

Yeah, but I do need some other software too, don't I? At least for uploading the FPGA configuration created with the ISE. Is that available for Linux for the AVnet boards? (I didn't find any word on that so I passed the board last time)

From neeraj snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.invalid Tue Sep 21 13:04:00 2004

Well, I'd love to run Linux on the PPC too :) EDK/XMK might be sufficient in the beginning... or maybe I could just ignore the PPC cores on the FPGA for the beginning and worry about that later. I suppose the Xilinx FPGA can be used without utilizing the PPCs?

From Steve Williams Mon Sep 20 16:53:24 2004:

That sounds like a reasonable price range, yes.

I've used Firewire DV-camera when needed, but the most common way has been to read video from harddisk. Real-time capable FPGA would make the camera more useful.

Well, I have been writing VHDL for years now... it's just that software simulations tend to be a "bit" slow.