Looking for FPGA to design a simple board - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: alexxk
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 06, 2016, 08:01:54 am
content: Hi guys, I'm new to this forum altough I have been reading for some time.I'm an ebedded system master student in technical university Vienna and I'd like to lear how to design a fpga pcb board. I already have some experience in VHDL but I also would like to learn how to design the coresponding hardware!During our courses we only use Xilinx fpgas. Till now we only worked with spartan 3A and xilinx ISE. I also have a private ZYBO Zynq board to play around with. In comparison I don't like Vivado because comparing it to ISE it's way to complex. I really don't want to take a only ISE supported device, since ISE doesnt really work on Windows 10 and is also no longer developed (getting it running was some work, and although I tried it, getting IMPACT to work was impossible for me).If Spartan 7 gets released I'd like to use it and lean vivado, but who know when it will happen and even then how much the devices would cost (Artix-7 is way to expensive with over 20€ for the smallest device).So I'd like to take a look to some other fpga vendors. I allready looked at lattice and it seems really nice, especially the Mach XO series. They are cheap and from what I have read they don't need a serial memory to load the configuration.Does someone know if i need an expensive platform cable to program the device?Does anyone have another recommendation?For the board I want to design, I'd like to connect some LEDs, switches, buttons, 7-Segment display and add a RAM to it (to learn how to interface it and how to route a RAM with the timings and latencys). I'd like to program a softcore on the fpga, does lattice have soemthing simmilar to a microblaze or would I have to take something from opencores?Thank you for your help!Alex

author: electrotrains
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 06, 2016, 11:59:23 am
content: Hi Alex,Altera's Max10 might also be worth a look.It's hand solderable (QFP 0.5mm pitch), no need for seperate configuration memory, and the 10M08 is big enough to run a NIOS softcore. Costs about $15.I used one for my first FPGA project, and managed to get a working PCB on the first attempt using the evaluation kit board schematic as a useful reference (I'd largely experimented with arduino-based projects prior to this).My project is open source if you wanted to look at the eagle board files/schematic:https://github.com/robinhedwards/UltimateCartRobin

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2016, 01:19:00 pm
content: Lattice XO2 is nice as it has a single supply version (HC) , and has on-chip config memory so all you need to get running is 3.3v power and the JTAG pins.

author: ale500
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2016, 01:40:22 pm
content: Hei Robin that is a very nice project & looking board !Lattice MachXO2 come in nice TQFP packages and Lattice Diamond (the IDE) is nice to work with. You can source yourself one breakout board for the lcmxo2-7000, all pins are broken out to 4 connectors, even the JTAG pins. They cost like $30. Sadly, they top at ~7000 LEs.Altera's MAX10 are also nice. They have one advantage or two over the MachXO2: embedded multipliers, more block RAM and faster logic. There are bigger devices too (up to 50 k LE), even in TQFP-144 !.

author: awallin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2016, 04:03:20 pm
content: check out olimex's latest blog posthttps://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/ice40hx1k-evb-open-source-hardware-fpga-board-designed-with-kicad-and-working-with-icestorm-foss-toolchain-first-prototypes-are-ready-and-run/if there aren't already kicad files published for this I am guessing they will publish them by the time this product is available.For xilinx spartan 6 there are the papilio pro and pipistrello boards, both have Eagle files available under CC or similar license.

author: Muxr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 06, 2016, 11:55:40 pm
content: I second the lattice Mach X02 suggestion. The dev boards are pretty cheap as well.

author: martinayotte
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2016, 02:05:37 pm
content: New board from Olimex will be available soon :https://olimex.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/ice40hx1k-evb-open-source-hardware-fpga-board-designed-with-kicad-and-working-with-icestorm-foss-toolchain-first-prototypes-are-ready-and-run/

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2016, 06:26:47 pm
content: If you want to stick with Xilinx and simple devices then then XC95XL series is nice. Runs at 3.3V but it has 5V tolerant inputs. You can use the same workflow but a CPLD typically has simpler timing problems.

author: hlavac
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2016, 09:53:39 pm
content: There is even cheaper breakout board for MachXO for small complexity stuff.Also look at Altera Cyclone IV & DE0 Nano board from Terasic. Quartus II seems to be quite a pleasure to use compared to the Xilinx stuff.

author: alexxk
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 09, 2016, 05:00:03 pm
content: Thanks for the replys guys!I will look at the Max10 and Proasic3 and copare them to the Mach XO2!Sadly it seems that some of you guys didnt't even read my opening post :/

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 09, 2016, 05:05:00 pm
content: Too longwindedLattice had a very nice microblaze alternative: the LM32 32 bit softcore. I don't recommend using anything from Opencores unless you are in a real hurry and don't need speed and have plenty of resources.