Forum Discussion
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
14 years agoThe regulal LVDS pins aren't fast enough for SATA. You need an FPGA with transceivers for that, such as an Arria, or one of the Cyclone/Statix GX variants. Have a look here (http://www.altera.com/technology/high_speed/protocols/sata-sas/pro-sata-sas.html).
As for an inexpensive starter board with pins, you can have a look at the bemicro (http://www.arroweurope.com/markets-solutions/solutions/bemicro/bemicro.html) (careful, IIRC this board uses a special kind of RAM that requires a licensed core) or the Cyclone IV de0-nano (http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?no=593) board. I'd recommend the DE0-Nano. It has 72 I/O pins from what I can read.