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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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8 years ago

Are there kits with a free Quartus license?

The web page for Intel® SoC FPGA Embedded Development Suite ( https://www.altera.com/products/design-software/embedded-software-developers/soc-eds/ds-5-toolkit.html ) in the license comparison table says "Free with select Intel SoC FPGA Development Kits." I checked several Cyclone V kits, none of them has such a feature. So, is that statement just a marketing trick?

I've always been more Altera fan than Xilinx, but as I was really surprised to find out recently, Xilinx does not charge for embedded ARM9 license.

4 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    The two that I know of (that give DS-5 licenses) are:

    https://www.altera.com/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-soc.html

    https://www.altera.com/products/boards_and_kits/dev-kits/altera/kit-arria-v-soc.html

    I believe the license are good for a year. Do note that you can use the Community Edition which is free, but with reduced functionality. Anyway, ARM also offers 30 day trial for its full suite which you can use to evaluate against your requirement.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    Thanks! It looks like to work with Linux on Altera chips you need to pay about $1500 anyway. The cheap kits will allow to reuse demo projects only. Switch to Xilinx is quite a logical move :(

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    There are cheaper SoC kits out there (Terasic has one for about ~USD90). I guess you need DS-5's full functionality that is not covered by the Community Edition? Typically full-fledged debuggers are quite expensive...

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    8 years ago

    I am more interested in embedded Linux on Cyclone V with dual ARM core. Unfortunately all I can do with a free license on DE0-nano SoC kit is just reuse pre-compiled projects. For me it looks like a huge marketing mistake because many customers are pushed to competitors whose free licenses cover this with very little limitations (if any at all).