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Altera_Forum
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15 years ago

FPGA Powering PCB Guidelines??

Could someone provide some PCB design guidelines concerning powering my EP3C16Q240 FPGA? I can only use a 2 layer design, and I need 1.2 V to power the FPGA core and 2.5 V to power all the I/O buffer...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
15 years ago

Hi,

If you are useing a cyclone III and try to put it on two layers you will have problems. You must follow http://www.altera.com/literature/dp/cyclone3/pcg-01003.pdf I would suggest that you do use 4 or more layers there is little cost difference between that and 2 layers if you use an external company to make the PCB, compared to the cost of the components. Have a look at http://www.pcbtrain.co.uk/

If anyone questions why you have gone to 4 or more layers point out that it is 10X more expensive to fix the radio emssions issues at the enclosure level and 100X to 1000X more expensive to fix the problems in the field.

If this is for your function generator, then it will be probably impossiable to get good performance with two layers.