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

Bill Henning · 2014-01-24 07:53

Altera DE1-SoC Board

Guys - it seems to me that this would support 3 cogs, 256KB hub, and not need an extension board!

At $200, it would allow a LOT more people to get involved with P2 testing and maybe even P3 development.

FPGA Device

Cyclone V SoC 5CSEMA5F31C6 Device
Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 (HPS)
85K Programmable Logic Elements 2-3 cogs!
4,450 Kbits embedded memory 256KB hub!
6 Fractional PLLs
2 Hard Memory Controllers easy SDRAM for Chip

Configuration and Debug

Quad Serial Configuration device EPCQ256 on FPGA
On-Board USB Blaster II (Normal type B USB connector)

Memory Device

64MB (32Mx16) SDRAM on FPGA - same as on the Prop2 module!
1GB (2x256Mx16) DDR3 SDRAM on HPS
Micro SD Card Socket on HPS

Communication

Two Port USB 2.0 Host (ULPI interface with USB type A connector)
USB to UART (micro USB type B connector)
10/100/1000 Ethernet
PS/2 mouse/keyboard
IR Emitter/Receiver

[B]Connectors[/B]

Two 40-pin Expansion Headers
One 10-pin ADC Input Header
One LTC connector (One Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) Master ,one I2C and one GPIO interface )

Display

24-bit VGA DAC - could be mapped to P2 DACs in Verilog!

Audio

24-bit CODEC, Line-in, line-out, and microphone-in jacks

Video Input

TV Decoder (NTSC/PAL/SECAM) and TV-in connector

Switches, Buttons and Indicators

4 User Keys (FPGA x4)
10 User switches (FPGA x10)
11 User LEDs (FPGA x10 ; HPS x 1)
2 HPS Reset Buttons (HPS_RST_n and HPS_WARM_RST_n)
Six 7-segment displays

Sensors

G-Sensor on HPS

Power

12V DC input

See http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=836&PartNo=2

rjo__ · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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__ · 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 inhmmm, wonder who could do the work?

Bill Henning · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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 · 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

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

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