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paramProd's avatar
paramProd
Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
42 minutes ago

Terasic Apollo S10 SOM_FA

I bought the Terasic P16E-FMCP to use on my Terasic Apollo S10 SOM board for PCI Express 3.0 implimentation. However after testing the included program, it did not work, so I emailed Terasic Support and they told me it was only tested on Intel CPU and it appears never tested on AMD. So they made me run a simple program called System Information Viewer from rh-software.com which tested the information sent and received from the PCI endpoint and it appears there are errors stimming back from the demo program does not natively run on AMD processors. So for the past 6 months, Terasic has been dragging there feet on this issue, telling me they will work on a solution but I must go out and purchase another computer by Intel, then run several versions of Quartus Pro, starting from 19.1, through 23.3, I must download them individually. 

I told them I am not doing this, I am not being paid to test out your code, I simply purchased the board direct from you for $650, and NOWHERE on the website does it publish it works only with Intel CPU. Instead they are pointing the fingers at me saying I'm delayin a resolution on this issue by not testing out there code, I told them that IS YOUR JOB! I AM NOT EMPLOYED BY TERASIC!  

Terasic is a partner program of Intel, they have all the means to reach out and contract a device driver writer and solve this incompatiblity issue. This is beyond my expertise. They simply won't do it. 

Does anyone have a solution to this problem? Why are they passing the buck at me? 

2 Replies

  • paramProd's avatar
    paramProd
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager

    That's a genuinely frustrating situation, and I want to give you a clear technical picture of what's actually happening here, because I think the framing of "Intel CPU vs AMD CPU" is obscuring the real root cause.

    The core technical reality: The PCIe endpoint implemented in the Stratix 10 SX FPGA on the Apollo S10 SOM (device 1SX280H) "Apollo S10 SoM" is a hardware interface that operates at the PCIe protocol level — it is completely CPU-architecture-agnostic. Whether your host PC runs an Intel or AMD processor has no bearing whatsoever on whether the FPGA's PCIe hard IP enumerates and links up correctly. PCIe is a standardized bus protocol; the FPGA endpoint does not know or care what brand of CPU is on the other end of the root complex.

    Where the real incompatibility is: The problem you're describing — a demo application producing errors when run on an AMD system — is almost certainly in Terasic's host-side software layer: either the demo application itself, or the PCIe device driver it uses to communicate with the endpoint. Some demo software vendors hard-code assumptions based on Intel chipset or CPU-specific timing behaviors, or use CPU-vendor-specific API calls or intrinsics. That is a software bug, not an FPGA design issue, and it is squarely Terasic's responsibility to fix.

    On the Quartus version testing request: Asking you to iterate through Quartus Prime Pro versions from 19.1 through 23.3 to test their code is unreasonable, and you are correct to push back on it. The Apollo S10 SOM's published latest supported Quartus version is 20.2.0 "Apollo S10 SoM" — that is the authoritative baseline for this board, and that is where Terasic's own validation should be anchored.

    Practical suggestions for you:

    • Request in writing from Terasic a clear statement of which host OS, driver version, and software stack their demo has been validated against. "Intel CPU only" is not an acceptable support scope for a PCIe endpoint demo — they need to identify the specific software component that fails.
    • If you have access to Quartus Prime Pro 20.2 and the board's design example, you can verify the PCIe link independently by checking whether the endpoint enumerates correctly in your system's device manager/lspci before running any Terasic demo software. Enumeration succeeding (or failing) tells you whether the issue is at the PCIe hardware link level or purely in the demo application.
    • The Apollo Carrier board and its associated resources "Apollo S10 SoM" should include a user manual — a User Manual is listed as an included resource for the Apollo S10 SOM. "Apollo S10 SoM" Review that for any host-system requirements Terasic may have documented but not prominently advertised.

    You are correct that Terasic, as an Altera partner, has the engineering resources to identify and fix a host-software AMD compatibility issue. That is not end-user test work — it is their product validation responsibility.

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