Which Altera to buy?

Does that mean you agree with what I wrote? Or that you disagree? Or that you don't understand it? Or that you just don't want to think about it?

Reply to
David Brown
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David,

You are always writing posts to guide me in my endeavors. It is a good sentiment, and I wanted to do likewise.

Your skills and knowledge are a great asset. Use them wisely.

Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

The "low end" is where I live! So, I don't know about those $18,000 FPGAs, or who the heck USES them.

I know that in very small quantities, the Xilinx XC3S50A is down to $6.12! This is pretty amazing! The non-volatile version of the part (XC3S50AN) is $9.91.

These prices have actually come DOWN sometime this year! I have no idea what an equivalent Altera part would cost, due to the apples vs. oranges of different internal architecture.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Spartan 3 is not included in the chart. In the log-log version (THANKS, Theo!) it is clear that the Spartan 6 does VERY well against most other types in the price/LUT.

And, Virtex 5 is just about the WORST!

You can't compare Spartan 3 vs. Spartan 6 due to the significant changes in the LUT capacity, unless you have some kind of correction factor to apply. I have NO IDEA how one would establish such a factor, though!

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Sometime recently we went out for quotes on Spartan 6 and Artix 7 parts looking for the best price for a part with 4 GTP transceivers. The Artix-7 won that race, but the parts with fewer than 100K LE are still hard to get. The smallest Artix 7 (and possibly cheapest Xilinx FPGA) is the XC7A15T, which is only supported by the latest Vivado release and looks to be 15-18 weeks out.

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Gabor
Reply to
GaborSzakacs

Note that quite a few of the more expensive Altera eval boards ship with a "free" design tools DVD. The problem is, to actually use those design tools you need a license which is most definitely not free (possibly several times more expensive than the board itself)

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Reply to
mnentwig

Ran a number of opcores.org processor designs on Spartan 3&6, Kintex-7, Cyclone 2&4 and Arria II. ("

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" pull "family comparison; numbers below are from a more recent version)

The LUT count averages are: S-3: 1.46 4LUTs to one ALUT S-6 & K-7: 1.05 6LUTs to one ALUT C-2 & C-4: 1.58 4LUTs to one ALUT So roughly 1.5 4LUTs per 6LUT or ALUT.

Fmax generally scales with process node

(altor32, atlas_2K-base, eco32, leros, m1_core, mblite, navre, next186, pic16c5x, pdp11-34verilob, risc5, t65 & tv80; typically 1K to 4K LUT designs)

Reply to
jim.brakefield

I ended up ordering this board:

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I was informed in email today I should receive it early next week.

I'm going to spend some time getting communication working between the FPGA and the host computer as a debugging feature of the Oppie-1 CPU. I will modify my Oppie-1 Debugger to receive the debug data from the live device and display it in execution as it goes, or step-by-step, as it does presently in the simulation.

I will also be able to send/receive updates to memory locations, change register values, reset, restart, a true remote debugging app.

Then ... on to Oppie-2.

----- If anyone has advice on how to get communication running most easily on this board, I would appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

Doesn't look like you have a lot of options on this board. UART serial to USB is the one comms choice. I thought you were going to use Ethernet. That seems to be another $250, wow, more than the FPGA board. I guess you can add one via the Arduino interface for next to nothing.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

I plan to. I won't receive the PHY board I bought until the end of December though. If there's another option I'll use that in the time in-between, and possible after that.

I have one of the Silicon Labs chips arriving this week, but I'll need to get a converter from its TQFP48 form factor to something usable by human beings. I may go ahead and do that anyway. The Silicon Labs API is very clean and straight-forward.

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Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

I'm not keeping up with your choices. Why would you buy a chip that isn't on a board? Why not use the Arduino interface? I'm sure you can get Ethernet MAC modules for next to nothing.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

It was free. I ordered it as a sample.

Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

There are two Altera components that might be useful:

The JTAG UART is something that looks like a UART device, but runs via JTAG which is connected to your PC using USB. That means it's very simple to get a text terminal up from your FPGA. It isn't a 16550-style UART, it has a somewhat simpler interface (and if you're using a NIOS-II processor Altera's tools generate libraries so that printf() etc works). That means you don't need any extra hardware to get a serial port - you just run 'nios2-terminal' on your PC and you get a console of whatever comes out of the JTAG UART.

System Console is an Altera (Java) app that allows you to get debug access to your FPGA, assuming your FPGA uses AXI or Altera's Avalon interconnect, which can be built with Altera's Qsys GUI tool for building systems-on-chip. Your components have AXI or Avalon interfaces, and you join them together in Qsys GUI (wiring up buses, interrupts, setting addresses, etc). Qsys synthesises a network on chip for you that implements the interconnect you wanted (so the 'buses' are actually packet switched networks). Once you've done that you can just drop in a debug module that allows access to those buses from System Console via JTAG via USB. In System Console on your PC you can write TCL scripts to access memory, change peripheral registers, etc. Since it's plugged into your existing interconnect it can access whatever is connected to it.

In our case we have both System Console and a CPU debug unit. The debug unit is inside the CPU and allows insertion of instructions into the pipeline, which means we can force it to execute code to set registers etc. We use both that mechanism and System Console to access memory. The debug unit is implemented using a JTAG UART, but using it as a pipe to convey debug instructions rather than as a text terminal (we have another JTAG UART as the console).

I'd suggest first taking the example projects supplied with the board, which use the NIOS-II CPU, and making yourself familiar with the toolchain: Quartus compilation Megawizard [1] Qsys (system-on-chip generator) NIOS-II bare-metal software world (Eclipse editor, C compiler, Board Support Package (BSP) of drivers for the FPGA hardware) Programming

and only then go 'off piste'. For an example, this is the FPGA practical course that I teach that goes through the basics (from no HDL experience to building a heterogenous multicore system-on-chip in 24 hours of lab time):

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You don't have the same board but many of the concepts should still apply.

Theo

[1] Megawizard (a tool for configuring standalone IP blocks such as PLLs) is being phased out and rolled into Qsys, but it's still relevant at the moment
Reply to
Theo Markettos

Why would you *order* a chip that isn't on a board? I have lots of "sample" chips I've never used because they aren't on a board.

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

I liked the API and documentation. It's a beautiful product. If I ever create my own mainboard, I'll probably use two or three of that component for those reasons.

Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

I can't say I follow your reasoning. You are using this chip which requires you to find a board to mount it on... but just for a few weeks. Then you will use the "PHY" that you have ordered. Then at a latter time you will use this chip again? Why not just stick with this chip? Once you figure out how to mount it where's the down side?

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

You misunderstand because we're not having a conversation, but only back-and-forth across a written form where assumption and guesswork enter in. And you already seem to have either a natural bias against me, or are having difficulties in understanding me, or both.

Don't worry about it though. It will all work out.

Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

I don't have any bias. I read what you write. If that is not clear I ask questions. But like this time you often don't answer them. So I am left not knowing what is in your mind. This part of the conversation was so disjointed that I reviewed the messages you wrote, so I'm pretty sure I am reading it correctly.

If you don't want to discuss this with me, that's fine. If you don't respond I'll stop asking. :)

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Rick
Reply to
rickman

Theo Markettos wrotes:

Theo, a lot of useful information. Thank you very much.

Best regards, Rick C. Hodgin

Reply to
Rick C. Hodgin

I would look at Microchip's 28j60 controller, you only need a few wires to talk to it (SPI) and there are lots of low cost eval boards available on eBay and other places.

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Hans

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Reply to
HT-Lab

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