Master Thesis on Cyclone V with DDR3 - Image Processing

Hi Gwall,

thanks for your reply.

I really love HW design, and i would like to learn a lot in that matter. That kind of board would give me a great opportunity.

I have done some research on Cyclone V developement kits and found out that:

On http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-gx.html

There are for DDR3 32-bit data bus two x16 devices

and one x8 device for ECC support.

Mainly on CV boards Altera uses:

MT41J128M8JP-125:G

MT41J128M16JT-125:D

They are not available on Digikey, however there are:

MT41J128M8JP-15E

MT41J128M16HA-15E

Which are only slower (667MHz compared to 800Mhz).

So i assume that it doesn't make a difference and i could use those ICs.

My questions:

1. Would i be able to use reliably only two x16 ICs without x8 for ECC ?

2. I assume that for HMC there are dedicated pins. It's more efficent to use HMC and SMC, so why use

on http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyclone-v-e.html SMC instead of HMC?

I don't know any specifics and wasn't looking for them, however i suppose that SMC utilizes much, much more FPGA resources.

3. What about DDR3 lenght matching. What do you think about the picture on that blog:

http://www.fedevel.com/welldoneblog/2012/05/so-dimm-ddr3-length-matching-diagram/ ?

It could be used also for ICs ?

4. Should I use T-Branch topology for DDR3 with Cyclone V?

5. What about embedded ARM cores as i see know. I thought that there was only one, but it seems that it's dual core.

http://www.altera.com/devices/processor/arm/cortex-a9/software/proc-soc-embedded-design-suite.html

Can i use standard JTAG for Cortex-A9 and be able to do all my developement? What about Linux Application Development ?

6. What would be the easiest and cheapest connection of some SDI interface, SD-SDI.

I also found http://www.microtronix.com/hsmc-daughtercard-solutions/hdmi-receiver-transmitter-hsmc-daughtercard-1

but for this kind of solution i can see that "The AD9889 requires the use of an I2C IP Core for device configuration."

So i wouldn't be able to copy hardware and use it quickly and easily.

Thanks,

madness