What is Altera postion about USB Blaster Clones?

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I am developing an Cyclone IV development kit and want to embed an USB Blaster compatible circuit (not the same hardware). Is there any license requirement or legal problem regarding this? The USB Blaster will be used just to program and debug the Existing FPGA on the board and wont enable to program external ones.

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It depends on whether you plan on selling your board. The USB-Blaster clone USB PID/VID need to match Altera's ... which I would assume should not be used on your own product. Terasic is an Altera partner, so they can officially sell their Terasic Blaster without upsetting Altera.

Have you tried asking Altera? It would be interesting to hear what they say.

What circuit are you planning on using for your clone? I have some ideas for an improved USB-Blaster, but haven't finished the design yet ...

Cheers,

Dave

Altera licences the USB-Blaster and USB-Blaster II designs to board developers at reasonable rates. Your local sales office or FAE will be able to put you in touch with the correct person (or send me a private message).

Using the official design gets you a cable which is guaranteed to work with Altera software, and if you choose the USB-Blaster II varient then you get the fast debug interface as well.

Thank you for your reply. I just sent an private message to wombat explaining my situation and also sent an message to altera. Lets wait and see. Our circuit is going in the other way. We are implementinng a very minimalist solution (microcontroller based) to reduce cost. Our board is targeting people that never used FPGA so usually a low cost board helps a lot.

Best regards,

Luis Filipe Rossi

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We are implementinng a very minimalist solution (microcontroller based) to reduce cost. Our board is targeting people that never used FPGA so usually a low cost board helps a lot.

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So long as you do not want to be compatible with Quartus,, i.e., want your hardware to appear as a USB-Blaster, you can use the microcontroller to program the FPGA using standard methods. For example,

http://www.ovro.caltech.edu/~dwh/carma_board/fpga_configuration.pdf

The minimalist approach is probably an FTDI FT232H in MPSSE mode, i.e., a chip that costs ~$2.50.

Cheers,

Dave

No you got me wrong. I want to be compatible with quartus. Actually the circuit is working pretty well. My main concern is related to USB VID/PID....

Regards,

Luis Filipe Rossi

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No you got me wrong. I want to be compatible with quartus. Actually the circuit is working pretty well. My main concern is related to USB VID/PID....

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Ok, so you have a USB-Blaster clone implemented in a microcontroller (possibly based on Kolja Waschk's Cypress FX2 design), and it is working with the USB VID/PID correctly, but the problem is that this is Altera's VID/PID ...

The only clone I've ever found with a different VID/PID is the EE-Blaster from Entner:

http://www.entner-electronics.com/tl/index.php/eeblaster.html

Their driver files appear to be FTDI based, but their VID/PID is 1A5B:0100.

I don't have one of these, but I am curious as to how they got their device to work with Quartus. Perhaps you can ask them.

Cheers,

Dave

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Thank you for your reply. I just sent an private message to wombat explaining my situation and also sent an message to altera. Lets wait and see. Our circuit is going in the other way. We are implementinng a very minimalist solution (microcontroller based) to reduce cost. Our board is targeting people that never used FPGA so usually a low cost board helps a lot.

Best regards,

Luis Filipe Rossi

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What was the outcome of this Luis?

Hi, there is also a small module (SMD) that can be soldered to the board to include a USB-Blaster directly (thus the board is like having a USB-Blaster connected)

https://shop.trenz-electronic.de/en/search?ssearch=tei0005