How to choose an FPGA

The best option would be to start implementing the design and see how many resources you'll need.

When you have feel confortable, then you choose the FPGA.

Thanks for your answers! I think that the FPGA should have at least 16 KByte of memory (more is better). Is that possible? What about the memory on Cyclone III and IV ?

I know that my question seems quite stupid, but i don't know much of the architecture of an FPGA.

Thank you.

http://www.altera.com/devices/fpga/cyclone-iv/overview/cyiv-overview.html

Each M9K block provides 8 or 9 kbit (depends on how you use them)

So, you'll need arround 16 M9K blocks. Even the smallest Cyclone IV E has 30 of them.

rbugalho thank you very much for your answers! How can i read or write data from/to M9K memory blocks? Can i instantiate each single block and then use them to store data ?

Thank you!

EDIT: I'll write my doubts here: http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32169

One more question. I found this: http://www.buyaltera.com/scripts/partsearch.dll?detail&name=544-2731-nd

Does it mean that the selected core cyclone IV cost 161.60 $ ? How can i program it without a board ?

You can't, you need to either buy a dev kit with a suitable FPGA (or design your own).

There are few ways to use a M9K:

- Write HDL that matches the HDL coding guidelines for RAMs; Quartus will infer and map to M9K.

- Use a MegaFunction component

- Use a LPM_RAM component

Yes, I suggest you buy a dev kit that fits your IO requirements. TerASIC is a company that provides most of Altera's development boards, and has a University program, so you can get them at a discount if you jump though some hoops with your school.

www.terasic.com

For a cheap board, to play with DE0 or DE0-nano are good boards to start with. If you need lots of wiggle room as far and FPGA resources, the DE2-115 is not too bad for educational price.

You may see if your program has some of these boards available already that you can use.

Of course the your selection may be more determined based on other capabilities the board provides, the LCD, ADC/DAC's etc, so check them all out.

With Terasic they tend to ship right away, 2 day international (from Taiwan), so you are paying $30-50 for shipping, but they are good boards. We have purchased several DE0's and DE4's from them for various projects. We've only had one board failure on a DE4, and that was due to a loose daughter-board that shorted and fried the FPGA. (Shorted 12V onto the FPGA IO's)

They ship with a CD with Quartus and example projects, etc, but they tend to be for whatever version of Quartus was shipping when they developed the board, so for most of them, they are several revisions out of date. I would install the latest version of the Quartus web-pack, and use that if you can. You have to import the projects and may need to tweak with them to get them to work in the latest quartus depending on how old the version is, but it's usually a good learning experience, and if you need help, it's easier to ask for support from Altera..

Pete

Pete