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Altera_Forum
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17 years ago

VHDL Porting from Altera to Actel

Hi Guys,

I am currently designing a FPGA based camera system for a small satellite, its for my masters thesis. As my knowledge is very limited to fpga and vhdl its quite a learning curve. My Question : As space is full of radiation, and it can cause serious issues, is is posible to do development on an altera dev kit de2-70 multimedia one and then just resynth it for a say actel rad hard device.

Kind Regards

Jacques Kleynhans

12 Replies

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    Hi,

    portable design is posible wit some restrictions and problems:

    - amount of resource in either case and speed limitations

    - use inference only. i.e. don't instantiate any altera specific modules

    - you can test that as you build up by running double compilations.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    For the radiation resistant feature to be meaningful at all, you have to perform timing analysis for the target platform with a degraded timing model, hopefully available for the device.

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    Have a think about your application a little bit - some satellites use SRAM based FPGA like Xilinx and Altera and get away without the rad hardening because they only run for short periods of time before they are powered off again.

    Just a thought - I don't know if it helps or not.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    You are absolutely right, havn't thought of it that way.

    Thx Batfink

    Can I use something like PROM as a bootloader, for when a error occurs just reload the device. An FPGA can be remotely reconfigured right ??
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    Have a look at the configuration app note - there' a whole load of stuff in there about different ways of configuring the FPGA.

    You'll have to dig this out for yourself but I'm sure I've stumbled across a CRC module to detect corrupted FPGA configuration.

    Bear in mind that you can force the FPGA to reconfigure itself by pulling the nConfig line low and releasing it.

    So you could have a rad hardened but small and therefore cheaper Actel to do the critical stuff and controlling the power / configuration of a larger SRAM type FPGA.

    Sorry to be a bit vague with the suggestions - it's not stuff I've really looked into in any really detail before.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    Thats fine ,

    I am in anycase very NOOB when it comes to FPGA this was just the project that was assigned to me, I still have to learn VHDL lot of work in front of me still......

    Whats the general feeling towards the DE2-70 development boards, I was looking at the multimedia one. For the academic price its worth it I think..

    I will look in to the CRC module stuff.
  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    Its basically the same one the one you mentioned is the DE1 kit the multimedia one is the DE2

  • Altera_Forum's avatar
    Altera_Forum
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    17 years ago

    You may want to consider the various effects of exposure on your device. There is a Single-Event effect which may be mitigated with reprogramming but there are also cumulative Total Dose effects which cause increase in Icc leakage currents and can be longer lasting, or permanently damaging.

    You'll find quite a bit of resource by starting here:

    http://radhome.gsfc.nasa.gov/

    -A

    --- Quote Start ---

    Have a think about your application a little bit - some satellites use SRAM based FPGA like Xilinx and Altera and get away without the rad hardening because they only run for short periods of time before they are powered off again.

    Just a thought - I don't know if it helps or not.

    --- Quote End ---