Shop OBEX P1 Docs P2 Docs Learn Events
Cyclone V GX Starter Kit — Parallax Forums

Cyclone V GX Starter Kit

jac_goudsmitjac_goudsmit Posts: 418
edited 2014-09-11 20:03 in Propeller 1
I just noticed that Altera/Terasic sells a Cyclone V GX starter kit for $179 but it's out of stock right now.

The capabilities of this board and this FPGA are somewhat between the DE0 and the DE2; it doesn't have some of the DE2's features but it does have Arduino headers which should make it easy to add hardware. And the price is much closer to a spouse-approvable level than the $600 DE2-115.

Just wondering: Does anyone have one of these? Is it worth getting (and giving up a week's worth of food :-)?

It should be easy to get the P1V to run on it, since it has something like 77K LE's and 512MB RAM...

===Jac

Comments

  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    edited 2014-09-04 14:51
    Certainly a nice board but the lack of easily accessible I/O is the main downside that I can see :(
    Lots of switches and leds and 7seg too. USB connector s/be mini or micro USB connector.
  • Todd MarshallTodd Marshall Posts: 89
    edited 2014-09-04 16:01
    jac_goudsmit wrote: »
    I just noticed that Altera/Terasic sells a Cyclone V GX starter kit for $179 but it's out of stock right now.

    The capabilities of this board and this FPGA are somewhat between the DE0 and the DE2; it doesn't have some of the DE2's features but it does have Arduino headers which should make it easy to add hardware. And the price is much closer to a spouse-approvable level than the $600 DE2-115.

    Just wondering: Does anyone have one of these? Is it worth getting (and giving up a week's worth of food :-)?

    It should be easy to get the P1V to run on it, since it has something like 77K LE's and 512MB RAM...

    ===Jac
    I have it but I'm not running it yet, other than the canned demo apps. I'm still swimming in Altera/Quartus/Qsys/SOPC/Avalon/VHDL documentation. But for sure I have no reason to regret my purchase. You may look at the next board up ... DE1 SOC board. Has less gingerbread (e.g. switches, pushbuttons, etc) but has a hardwired NiosII processor on the chip (the V GX requires you to install an FPGA version ... no big deal). I came real close to buying it too. I'm not sure the lack of easily accessible IO applies. It has lots of IO facilities on the board and you can get at pins through the 2x20 GPIO connector/header and even more through the expansion connector if you buy a mate for it. The FPGA chip has lots of capacity so you'll have no problem getting any kind of Propeller design to fit on it with room to spare. Guess it all just depends on what you want to do. If your threshold of pain is low, get the BeMicro with the Bundle. You get a decent (albeit small) Cylone FPGA and two high powered and fairly expensive A2D converter inputs ($50 just for dual channel 500MSps A2D chip) for just $50. I got two of them for some communications experiments.
  • jac_goudsmitjac_goudsmit Posts: 418
    edited 2014-09-05 10:04
    @Cluso99: It has a 20x2 header and (partially shared) Arduino headers for I/O. That's enough for my purposes. Looks like the HDMI is not usable without an additional IP license, though (not surprisingly -- HDMI itself is a licensed product; kinda insane but that's the way it is).

    @Todd: Hey thanks for the tip!. That DE1-SOC looks very versatile. On-board ARM-9, lots of RAM (more than the GX), TV-in and VGA out. I'll keep it in mind but unfortunately it's out of stock too and this one doesn't have a back-in-stock date, just "contact us", so possibly discontinued [EDIT: I just noticed it's a new product so probably not discontinued but just not available yet]. I already have the BeMicroCV (not the scope bundle, I didn't see that until I had already ordered mine) and it was the right price.

    ===Jac
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2014-09-05 10:09
    The DE1-SoC is a new product and isn't yet in production.
  • pik33pik33 Posts: 2,366
    edited 2014-09-05 10:58
    but has a hardwired NiosII processor on the chip

    It has ARM, not NIOS
    The DE1-SoC is a new product and isn't yet in production.

    It is in production - I have one of them on my desk. I even recompiled a p1v for this board. It uses ~8000 ALMs from ~32000 available and run @ 180 MHz.

    These boards are simply hard to buy; they are good and cheap, so every batch of them is quickly sold.
  • jac_goudsmitjac_goudsmit Posts: 418
    edited 2014-09-05 11:58
    pik33 wrote: »
    I even recompiled a p1v for this board. It uses ~8000 ALMs from ~32000 available and run @ 180 MHz.

    Would you care to share your source files? I'll put them up on Github. I may order one of the two boards discussed here when they become available; the BeMicro is nice but I don't have anything to connect to it (yet) so I haven't done a lot of playing around (yet). Maybe I'll take a trip to Fry's Electronics this weekend to see if they have some IDC connectors and ribbon cable to connect my BeMicro to a QuickStart HID board.

    ===Jac
  • pik33pik33 Posts: 2,366
    edited 2014-09-06 09:34
    I didn't change DE2-115 source files to make them run on DE1-SoC. I only (1) changed a chip in Quartus settings (2) created and imported a pin assignment file for the board. The original DE2-115 project which I moved to DE1-SoC has a modifed propeller (extended port B + unscrambled ram) . All of my p1v projects (propplay, prop+vga driver) will run with DE1-SoC without a problem.

    What matters is these pin assignments. The rest of the the Propeller code doesn't need any changes.

    I left the DE1-SoC project at the university, so I can publish this in Monday.
  • Cluso99Cluso99 Posts: 18,069
    edited 2014-09-06 15:13
    jac_goudsmit wrote: »
    Would you care to share your source files? I'll put them up on Github. I may order one of the two boards discussed here when they become available; the BeMicro is nice but I don't have anything to connect to it (yet) so I haven't done a lot of playing around (yet). Maybe I'll take a trip to Fry's Electronics this weekend to see if they have some IDC connectors and ribbon cable to connect my BeMicro to a QuickStart HID board.

    ===Jac
    Perhaps you can find an old PC IDE HDD cable. These are great for this type of project. They are easy to prise apart and recrimp if necessary - power/ground will need to be swapped around. Just be gentle/careful in prising the IDC connector apart.
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2014-09-07 21:52
    It has an A9 part, doesn't it ? thus needing the registered version of quartus... for $199 a very nice deal
  • pik33pik33 Posts: 2,366
    edited 2014-09-08 04:09
    This is DE1-SoC pin assignment file. No other changes in AHDL/Verilog files are needed to recompile a Propeller for this board. I don't know at this time how to add this to the standard Propeller project so one can download and compile it for this board. I did it manually by changing the chip in Quartus and then using "import assignments" , then recompile the project.
    zip
    zip
    DE1_SOC_pin_assignments.zip
    3K
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2014-09-08 04:17
    Ale wrote: »
    It has an A9 part, doesn't it ? thus needing the registered version of quartus... for $199 a very nice deal

    I don't have a board, but I tried building the demo with the free web edition. It was OK.

    I've just seen that Digi-Key has 52 of the boards in stock:

    http://www.digikey.co.uk/product-highlights/en/terasic-de1soc-development-kit/52033?WT.srch=1&WT.medium=cpc&WT.mc_id=IQ62046885-VQ2-g-VQ6-26639244386-VQ15-1t1-VQ16-c

    I'm ordering one.
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2014-09-08 08:49
    It has a Cyclone V SE 5CSEMA5F31C6N... that explains why it works with the free version. For the FPGA they mounted 64 MB SDRAM, the DDR3 is only available to the ARM processor. I still want one, or two...
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2014-09-10 05:34
    My DE1-SoC has just arrived from Digi-Key. I got free delivery, which is an advantage over buying direct from Terasic. It's a Rev. C board rather than the very latest Rev. C/Rev. D.

    They are going fast, they only have 47 left.

    It powers up and runs the demo.
  • pik33pik33 Posts: 2,366
    edited 2014-09-11 09:06
    This Cyclone V thing needs too much RAM to compile :(

    I am trying to compile the VGA framebuffer project for P1V and the Quartus got all 8 GB RAM and then started swapping. It compiles forever with 8 GB machine, 16 GB needed for this thing :(

    Edit: it choked on big framebuffer made of inferred internal ram. I am trying now to use a megafunction.
  • thoththoth Posts: 75
    edited 2014-09-11 20:03
    pik33 wrote: »
    This Cyclone V thing needs too much RAM to compile :(

    I am trying to compile the VGA framebuffer project for P1V and the Quartus got all 8 GB RAM and then started swapping. It compiles forever with 8 GB machine, 16 GB needed for this thing :(

    Edit: it choked on big framebuffer made of inferred internal ram. I am trying now to use a megafunction.

    Yeah. That's why I'm sticking with the DE0 CIV. Everything about the CV is slow and bloated. I may have to shell out the bucks for a DE2 if I need more capacity. For now I'm really pleased with the DE0. Nice package and a fast FPGA compile cycle. Loading is so fast I don't even notice it.
Sign In or Register to comment.