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Named's avatar
Named
Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
2 years ago
Solved

Can't find cheap minimal fpga dev board?

As a student, i have just finished a school project using the DE2-115 FPGA development board.
In this project, i used the NIOS II soft processor and Quartus Prime 18.1.
This board contains an Cyclone IV FPGA with 114k LE's, and is by now already 15 years old.

I wanted to try to make a soft processor myself, so i wanted to buy my own FPGA dev board.
For this, i wanted to buy something newer so i can take advantage of Moore's law and get something that is a little bit faster and with more LE's.

Assuming this field has not stagnated, i decided to conservatively set my requirements:
- Over 114K LE's. (I need all the LE's i can get, setting the Cyclone IV as a minimum baseline)
- Under 150 Euros, (As a student, i ain't rich. This is for a personal project, so no school funding)
- At least 4 GPIO pins. (more would be nice)
- Easy programming (The ability to run without flashing like the DE2-115 has was nice.)
- Some RAM (would be nice, not a hard requirement.)
- SD card interface (would be nice, not a hard requirement.)

What i do NOT care about:
- hard core processors
- video/audio/ethernet/USB/radio/analog IO interfaces
- Cryptography / AI / DSP / Security related features
- Whatever other special or fancy features exist.

I assumed this would be relatively easy to acquire.
However, i either find cheap boars with only ~10-20K LE's or fancy boards with all bells and whistles attached that you could buy a small car for.
(Nor can i find any graph of LE/pricing ratio's, which i find very odd.)

Would anyone know any kits with these requirements?
If not, can anyone explain what i am missing?
I was pretty certain that my requirements are not outrageous, but now i am not so sure anymore.
Could someone please enlighten me.

Thanks in advance,
And have a nice day.

Fpga Devkit
  • cfkd's avatar
    cfkd
    1 year ago

    Hi Named,


    Thank you for your question.

    We just recently made the announcement on Agilex 3; therefore, the development boards release schedule and software information is not yet available.


    As far as this link suggests, Intel Agilex series is available with Quartus Prime Pro edition : https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/central-libraries/us/en/documents/quartus-prime-compare-editions-guide.pdf

    Kindly note that for Agilex 3 however, its available software information is not yet finalized. In case you need to purchase a license, we recommend contacting the local sales for the price details. There is an evaluation license which you can obtain for free for 90 days.


    Kind regards,

    Chee


5 Replies

  • cfkd's avatar
    cfkd
    Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
    1 year ago

    Hi Named,


    Thank you for your question.

    We just recently made the announcement on Agilex 3; therefore, the development boards release schedule and software information is not yet available.


    As far as this link suggests, Intel Agilex series is available with Quartus Prime Pro edition : https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/central-libraries/us/en/documents/quartus-prime-compare-editions-guide.pdf

    Kindly note that for Agilex 3 however, its available software information is not yet finalized. In case you need to purchase a license, we recommend contacting the local sales for the price details. There is an evaluation license which you can obtain for free for 90 days.


    Kind regards,

    Chee


  • cfkd's avatar
    cfkd
    Icon for Occasional Contributor rankOccasional Contributor
    2 years ago

    Hi Named,


    Thank you for your question.

    Suggested devices will be from MAX 10 or Cyclone 10 families based on your technical requirements; as for the pricing, kindly contact the local sales team.


    Kind regards,

    Chee


  • Named's avatar
    Named
    Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
    2 years ago

    Hello Chee,

    I have already checked this.
    (i checked almost everything in the other categories too, but $25k is a bit much for a student...

    Unfortunately, the dev kits in the Cyclone family don't match my requirements. The LP FPGA has less than a quarter of the LE's, and all other boards are over 1k USD. There are 2 development kits in the MAX 10 family that may come close to my requirements, but they only have half of the specified LE's. Unless you are going to tell me that your sales team can give me a 90% off, i doubt i can afford it.

    While i now know that there are no development kits with these requirements, there is another question which i am still struggling with.
    From what i have seen, there is a gap between the "cheap" and "expensive" boards.
    In my search i found only 1 FPGA that had the right LE's and price, but it's dev board was very much unaffordable for me.
    Why are there no "mid-range" FPGA's? (/boards?)

    Have a nice day!

  • Named's avatar
    Named
    Icon for New Contributor rankNew Contributor
    2 years ago

    Hi Chee,

    Thanks for your quick response.
    I had previously assumed that the Agilex 3 series would not release soon, since there's no release date provided.
    Glad to see that i was wrong about that. I will be waiting for the release so i can take a look at their development boards.
    (And hope there's a board in there that i can afford.)

    When do you expect the development boards for the Agilex 3 to be released?

    Just to be sure, would the Agilex 3 series be supported in the Intel® Quartus® Prime / II Version (Lite / Web) edition? Or will there be a license included for the Quartus software? Because it would be pointless to buy a 200 dollar board if you need thousands of dollars more just to program it.

    Thank you and have a nice weekend!