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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

embedded software FPGA control

I need your help. I thinking of buying the new MaxV CPLD demo board. I known how to program in C and a beginner with Verilog. I want to write programs like the demo programs that come wi...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
15 years ago

You first need to decide what you want to do, and then select the device.

Your email starts with you indicating that you want to buy the MAX V CPLD. However, much of what you want to do indicates you really should be buying an FPGA based board.

What's the difference? Well, I haven't read the MAX V data sheets, but the other MAX CPLDs are devices with logic cells and Flash, and are great for 'instant on' logic, such as an FPGA configuration controller for a larger device. However, they don't have embedded memory blocks, and DSP blocks that you'll find in an FPGA, and you really don't want to miss out on those! In fact, I'm pretty sure the NIOS processor relies on the device having on-chip RAM.

What you really want to buy is something like the DE2 board (or DE1). Take a look at the Terasic web site, and see if you can afford any of them. Terasic makes these boards for the Altera University Program. If you are a student, you might be able to get student pricing for the boards; check out the Altera University Program web site and see what the requirements are.

Another option is the Arrow BeMicro and BeMicro-SDK boards (both under $100). The BeMicro board can be accessed via the serial port on its USB interface. The BeMicro-SDK is newer, but they've dropped the serial port, so the USB interface is only for the USB-Blaster programmer. You can use that interface from Altera's Quartus tools. In fact, its probably perfect for doing NIOS II development, since the IDE can communicate with the processor via the USB-Blaster interface.

The one caveat with the BeMicro-SDK is that its fairly new, so not well supported yet, eg. the DDR on the board is not supported by the Altera IP, but there is an OpenCore license available.

The BeMicro-SDK has an ethernet interface, as does the DE2 board. If you want to test PCIe, then you need a more powerful FPGA board. For example, the Stratix IV GX development kit is $5k. There are Cyclone boards too, but they're also $$

Feel free to ask more about these kits.

Cheers,

Dave