New Altera FPGA board - perfect for 2-3 cog P2 emulation! $199

Comments

• rjo__ Posts: 2,114

  2014-01-24 08:13 edited 2014-01-24 08:13

  Bill,
  
  I like the video-in and the memory… but I also like the convenience of the video-out and separate DACs on the adapter board.
  I only have a Nano, so if the Chip's massive changes don't fit, I'm high and dry… not for long, since Ken has our backs on this.
  
  Rich
• Bill Henning Posts: 6,445

  2014-01-24 08:19 edited 2014-01-24 08:19

  I am *REALLY* looking forward to the FPGA board Parallax is cooking up; but I fear it is going to be in the $300-$500 range, which would limit the number of forumistas that can play with it.
  
  Those of us with DE2-115's will still be fine... but I am just itching to try fast p2-p2 comms.
  
  What I liked about this $200 board was the two 40 pin connectors; that would expose 72 I/O's, so with the SDRAM & VGA & PS/2 we could have access to the rest of the P2 pins, for hardware hacking
  

  rjo__ wrote: »

  Bill,
  
  I like the video-in and the memory… but I also like the convenience of the video-out and separate DACs on the adapter board.
  I only have a Nano, so if the Chip's massive changes don't fit, I'm high and dry… not for long, since Ken has our backs on this.
  
  Rich
• Tor Posts: 2,010

  2014-01-24 08:23 edited 2014-01-24 08:23

  A nice board. But for a hobbyist the price is still out of range IMO. For me it would anyway be closer to $340, if not more - shipping has probably increased since I last checked Terasic. VAT and charges on top of shipping, so all in all it gets rather expensive. But the board does look nice.
  
  -Tor
• Bill Henning Posts: 6,445

  2014-01-24 08:29 edited 2014-01-24 08:29

  YUCK - almost doubles the price!
  
  I am thinking of getting one of these boards regardless of P2 support; having all that I/O easily available is very tempting.
• rjo__ Posts: 2,114

  2014-01-24 08:30 edited 2014-01-24 08:30

  Chip is good at multitasking:) If we drop the Nano… then it would be reasonable to assume that he will fill the vacuum with something.
  I really didn't care about the price of the new Parallax-FPGA boards (as long as they generated profits:). But now that you mention it… P2<->P2 experiments could get expensive and technically
  challenging. Maybe Ken could offer a combo pack with a little engineering thrown in…hmmm, wonder who could do the work?
• Bill Henning Posts: 6,445

  2014-01-24 08:42 edited 2014-01-24 08:42

  Yep.
  
  I hope Chip can chop enough (CTRB? CORDIC?) to keep the Nano viable for at least comm/io testing; I have three of them in the lab - that plus my DE2-115 would make a nice little network for testing P2 comms
  

  rjo__ wrote: »

  Chip is good at multitasking:) If we drop the Nano… then it would be reasonable to assume that he will fill the vacuum with something.
  I really didn't care about the price of the new Parallax-FPGA boards (as long as they generated profits:). But now that you mention it… P2<->P2 experiments could get expensive and technically
  challenging. Maybe Ken could offer a combo pack with a little engineering thrown in…hmmm, wonder who could do the work?
• pik33 Posts: 2,350

  2014-01-24 10:35 edited 2014-01-24 10:35

  A good board. Academic price is $150. We have Terasic's reseller in Poland so maybe it will be not $340 equivalent.
  
  A cheap board with a lot of power. Maybe it will be possible to build self-programming P2 environment with it, there is a Linux for this board available on Terasic's site.
• User Name Posts: 1,451

  2014-01-24 10:42 edited 2014-01-24 10:42

  pik33 wrote: »

  Maybe it will be possible to build self-programming P2 environment with it, there is a Linux for this board available on Terasic's site.

  
  Wouldn't that be cool!!
  
  I wonder how big the Linux footprint would be?
• Bill Henning Posts: 6,445

  2014-01-24 11:01 edited 2014-01-24 11:01

  I just had an interesting thought...
  
  I wonder if Altera would do a short run of these boards with the 149K LE version of the SoC? I think it is available in a compatible package to the 85K LE used on the board.
  
  That might save Parallax a lot of development money and time, and I suspect Altera could sell the resulting board for ~$300 if it wanted to.
  
  149K LE's would likely get us six cogs (ok, maybe only 5) but no need for an expansion board due to built-in VGA DAC's!
• jmg Posts: 15,148

  2014-01-24 11:11 edited 2014-01-24 11:11

  Impressive Board, and another option - SDRAM and VGA are especially appealing.
  Parallax could get one of these, as they flesh out their own designs.
  
  I'm sure effort will go into a Nano Build, it may be size-optimized, or some rare-resource may be trimmed (Cordic?), or there may even be two builds (choose one..), and there is also the existing BEmicro board, with 12% more LEs as a sub $50 Single COG point
• Bill Henning Posts: 6,445

  2014-01-24 11:15 edited 2014-01-24 11:15

  There are fairly cheap cables that break out VGA to component video...
  
  I really must check out that BE Micro board...
  

  jmg wrote: »

  Impressive Board, and another option - SDRAM and VGA are especially appealing.
  Parallax could get one of these, as they flesh out their own designs.
  
  I'm sure effort will go into a Nano Build, it may be size-optimized, or some rare-resource may be trimmed (Cordic?), or there may even be two builds (choose one..), and there is also the existing BEmicro board, with 12% more LEs as a sub $50 Single COG point
• Leon Posts: 7,620

  2014-01-24 11:53 edited 2014-01-24 11:53

  Bill Henning wrote: »

  There are fairly cheap cables that break out VGA to component video...
  
  I really must check out that BE Micro board...

  
  Verical (part of Arrow) has 901 available:
  
  https://www.verical.com/#searchCriterion=1&landingPage=catalogMpnView&searchName=&_i_=1&searchTerm=BEMICRO%20CV
  
  I bought mine from them.
• Bill Henning Posts: 6,445

  2014-01-24 11:56 edited 2014-01-24 11:56

  Thanks Leon, I think I'll pick up a couple. Seems like a nice little board, I was just reading its manual.
  

  Leon wrote: »

  Verical (part of Arrow) has 901 available:
  
  https://www.verical.com/#searchCriterion=1&landingPage=catalogMpnView&searchName=&_i_=1&searchTerm=BEMICRO%20CV
  
  I bought mine from them.
• Leon Posts: 7,620

  2014-01-24 12:01 edited 2014-01-24 12:01

  Here is a very simple VHDL test program for it:
  

  -- Simple test program for BeMicro CV kit
  --
  -- Lights USER_LED0 when Tact1 button is pressed
  --
  -- USER_LED0 - Pin U1
  -- Tact1 - Pin H18
  
  LIBRARY IEEE;
  USE IEEE.STD_LOGIC_1164.all;
  
  
  ENTITY Test IS
  	PORT
  	(
  		USER_LED0	: OUT	STD_LOGIC;
  		Tact1			: IN STD_LOGIC
  	);
  END Test;
  
  
  ARCHITECTURE a OF Test IS
               
     attribute chip_pin : string;
     attribute chip_pin of USER_LED0 : signal is "U1";
     attribute chip_pin of Tact1 : signal is "H18";
  
  
  BEGIN
  	USER_LED0 <= Tact1;
  END a;
  

  
  I don't like Verilog.
• jmg Posts: 15,148

  2014-01-24 15:27 edited 2014-01-24 15:27

  Bill Henning wrote: »

  Thanks Leon, I think I'll pick up a couple. Seems like a nice little board, I was just reading its manual.

  
  Might pay to pause, until Chip confirms he can build for that target OK ?
  Certainly looks good on paper.
• Tubular Posts: 4,622

  2014-01-24 15:50 edited 2014-01-24 15:50

  The other thing is Terasic announce their designs fairly early and it takes several months before free stock is available.
  
  The $300 SoC version (P0160) is now available from Mouser (35 in stock) but has gone out of stock again at Terasic.
  The $179 GX version (P0150) doesn't seem to be anywhere but due in Feb at Terasic.
  
  These are boards we were discussing last September so we need to allow a few months, or get some kind of supply guarantee. I would hope Parallax have other options within 6 months (silicon, and/or their own 5C A7 version). But yes, looks like a really nice board for the price, thanks Bill