Well, this seems fine to me, but I thought I'd ask the experts before doing it: I've made a VHDL design that's currently working on a Cyclone IV E. It uses the internal RAM (dual port mode), about 15 I/O pins, and... thats it! It's using only 9% of the Cyclone IV E's logic elements. I then looked for a smaller FPGA that can do what I need, and found the MAX 10 10M02. It has all the RAM I need supporting dual port mode, needs only one single 3.3V supply (instead of 3 different voltages that the Cyclone IV needs), and has internal FLASH, not needing an external configuration chip like the Cyclone IV needs. It can store it's configuration (the "VHDL code") inside it. Not to mention its cheaper! So, I created a new project on Quartus Prime, set it to the MAX 10 chip, copied the same VHDL code from the Cyclone IV project with only minor adjustments (RAM address length and such), added the dual port RAM IP, and it compiled just fine. In fact, the compilation report says I'm using only 18% of the MAX 10's logic elements. Well, when something is too good to be true, maybe it isn't. I don't have a MAX 10 here to test, so I'm designing the final board with the MAX 10 instead of the Cyclone IV, assuming it will work. I don't see a reason for why it won't, but since I'm pretty new with Altera's FPGAs I thought I'd come ask: If a design that doesn't require any extreme parameters gets ported from a Cyclone IV to a MAX 10, should it work just fine? Main clock will be 50MHz.

i don't see why not :) But if you really want to check it out on hardware, the evaluation kit isn't that expensive either: https://www.buyaltera.com/partdetail?partid=4976140 That is a bigger brother version (10M08) but it should behave just the same as the rest of the line-up

MAX10 is also my first choice for small designs like the mentioned one.

Good to know :) Just to make sure: - The MAX 10 10M02 has configuration FLASH memory to cover a VHDL code that uses all of its resources, correct? Because I saw that it has a little bit of "User FLASH memory", but I assume it's a separate FLASH memory just for any possible user data (if any), and not for storing the configuration. Is that right? - I also saw that the 10M02 has a built-in 116MHz oscillator. Is that true? So I don't even need an external XTAL if my design don't need a very precise clock signal?

The built-in flash is divided up into CFM (configuration flash memory) and UFM (user flash memory). Depending on the device, you can organize the UFM and CFM in different ways. The CFM is sized to be able to program the entire device.

According to: https://www.altera.com/en_us/pdfs/literature/an/an496.pdf the internal oscillator has a wide range between 55 to 116MHz. This indicate a large variation between devices, temperature, process. I wouldn't recommend using it (due to it's unpredictability) unless you are absolutely sure that your system (including devices sending data to and receive data from the Max device) can handle such large variation.

MAX 10 in place of Cyclone IV | Altera Community

20 Replies

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
Some MAX10 chips don't support pre-initialized memory (ROM for examples). The MAX10 chips with the analog features support pre-initialized memory.
Another note that when you select the single supply chips, note that the power consumption of the chip is larger than cyclone family. You may do some power analysis if this is an issue for your device.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
When you say "pre-initialized memory", you don't mean the configuration FLASH memory that holds the FPGA's "firmware"; the VHDL code, right?
I'm using the 10M02, which doesn't have analog features.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
All devices have at least enough flash to hold at least one copy of rhe logic of your design; some have only a tiny amount spare, some have lots spare (and by way of keeping the number of distinct devices reasonable, they've bundled larger flash size with the analog features, even though they aren't directly related.

Spare space if available can be used for:
Keeping a second copy of your logic, to allow safe in-place upgrades (where the logic currently running is used to control writes to the flash containing the logic image)
To initialise not only the logic but also the content of any RAM blocks you have used in your design (useful if you want a ROM look-up table, or perhaps if your design contains a soft CPU). This is what was being referred to above.
As "UFM" (user flash memory) as a separate peripheral you instantiate - for similar purposes to initialised RAM, but slower and more awkward to access.

I don't have the datasheet in front of me, but IIRC the base 10M02 have particularly small flash size - just enough for one copy of the logic and a bit of UFM.

The documentation is a bit confusing- it implies that all the variants of a given device (10M02,10M04 etc) have the same amount of flash, but you just can't use some of the features that would need to use the extra flash sectors. Possibly it's a price/features licensing thing policed by the compiler tools; possibly the less-memory parts are binned from production of the same silicon.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
Thanks for the explanation. The "Some MAX10 chips don't support pre-initialized memory" scared me, and I ran to the documentation to look it up, but it is indeed very confusing, and the documentation provided is not very clear. I saw on Google that "pre-initialized memory" does sometimes refer to the NIOS II CPU's firmware memory that should be loaded on RAM, or like you said, some "ROM" tables, which is actually pre-initialized RAM. But who knows...
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
OK, try to write some code which has some pre-initialized memory and then compile it.
I did it myself for NIOS on-chip memory that holds the compiled NIOS program code. If I used a chip with no analog features, the compilation flow did not complete and showed errors about this issue.

Altera_Forum

Honored Contributor

8 years ago

Just to make sure, this doesn't count as pre-initialized memory, right?

	type MATRIX is array (0 to 7, 0 to 15) of INTEGER;
	signal R_MATRIX : MATRIX := (
	
		(70, 68, 66, 64, 86, 84, 82, 80,  102,100, 98, 96,118,116,114,112),
		(71, 69, 67, 65, 87, 85, 83, 81,  103,101, 99, 97,119,117,115,113),
		(72, 74, 76, 78, 88, 90, 92, 94,  104,106,108,110,120,122,124,126),
		(73, 75, 77, 79, 89, 91, 93, 95,  105,107,109,111,121,123,125,127),
		(6,  4,  2,  0, 22, 20, 18, 16,   38, 36, 34, 32, 54, 52, 50, 48),
		(7,  5,  3,  1, 23, 21, 19, 17,   39, 37, 35, 33, 55, 53, 51, 49),
		(8, 10, 12, 14, 24, 26, 28, 30,   40, 42, 44, 46, 56, 58, 60, 62),
		(9, 11, 13, 15, 25, 27, 29, 31,   41, 43, 45, 47, 57, 59, 61, 63));

Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
It depends on how you try to use R_MATRIX. Try to compile a complete code and see the results.
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
I compiled it for the 10M02SCE and there were no errors. Is it then safe to assume that this array is not using pre-initialized memory?

Also, notice that this array is declared as INTEGER, but it actually hold bytes. That was because VHDL (as far as I looked) wouldn't allow me to use numbers in decimal for bytes; only in binary. Is there a way to do this array using bytes with decimal numbers?
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
The code you have be interpreted as memory or not. This depends on many factors like the usage of that memory and its size. Small size memory may not utilize memory but will utilize logic (this is common).

INTEGERs are just bits. Every data type in VHDL will be synthesized to bits (except things like REAL). Integers commonly will occupy 32 bits. The tool may be smart enough to detect that your integers are small, like the value 127 which you use. You can explicitly tell the compiler about the integer value range to ease the optimization.
You may write
type MATRIX is array (0 to 7, 0 to 15) of INTEGER range 0 to 127;
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
8 years ago
--- Quote Start ---
The code you have be interpreted as memory or not. This depends on many factors like the usage of that memory and its size. Small size memory may not utilize memory but will utilize logic (this is common).

INTEGERs are just bits. Every data type in VHDL will be synthesized to bits (except things like REAL). Integers commonly will occupy 32 bits. The tool may be smart enough to detect that your integers are small, like the value 127 which you use. You can explicitly tell the compiler about the integer value range to ease the optimization.
You may write
type MATRIX is array (0 to 7, 0 to 15) of INTEGER range 0 to 127;
--- Quote End ---

Thanks! I added the "range 0 to 127" to it. I was considering going to Verilog because of situations such as this, where certain data types can't be expressed in decimal, or hexadecimal, but only binary. But it's probably just my inexperience with VHDL.

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MAX 10 in place of Cyclone IV

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