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The above subtitle is not meant to be a flippant, rhetorical question. When investigating ready-made boards or systems, it is possible to lose sight of what we really need the board to do; in our case, the boards are to be used for FPGA-based prototyping.
There are so many FPGA boards and other FPGA-based target systems in the market at many different price and performance points. There are also many reasons why these various platforms have been developed and different uses for which they may be intentionally optimized by their developers. For example, there are FPGA boards which are intended for resale in low-volume production items, such as the boards conforming to the FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) standard (part of VITA 57). These FMC boards might not be useful for SoC prototyping for many reasons, especially their relatively low capacity. On the other hand, there are boards which are designed to be very low-cost target boards for those evaluating the use of a particular FPGA device or IP; once again, these are not intended to be FPGA-based prototyping platforms as we describe them in this book but may nevertheless be sold as a “prototyping board.”
Before discriminating between these various offerings, it is important to understand your goals and to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of the various options accordingly.
As discussed in chapter 2, the various goals of using an FPGA board might include:
• Verification of the functionality of the original RTL code
• Testing of in-system performance of algorithms under development
• Verification of in-system operation of external IP
• Regression testing for late-project engineering change orders (ECO)
• In-system test of the physical-layer software and drivers
• Early integration of applications into the embedded operating system
• Creation of stand-alone target platforms for software verification
• Provision of evaluation or software development platforms to potential partners
• Implementing a company-wide standard verification infrastructure for multiple projects
• Trade-show demonstrations of not-yet realized products
• Participation of standards organization’s “plugfest” compatibility events
Each of these goals place different constraints on the board and it is unreasonable to expect any particular board to fulfill optimally all goals listed above. For example, a complex board assembly with many test points to assist in debugging RTL may not be convenient or robust enough for use as a stand-alone software target. On the other hand, an in-house board created to fit the form factor and price required for shipment to many potential partners may not have the flexibility for use in derivative projects.
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Memory - Configuration Proms for FPGA's
Lifecycle:Obsolete -
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Memory - Configuration Proms for FPGA's
Lifecycle:Obsolete -
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Programmable logic array
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: Programmable logic array
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS: No RoHS
Manufacturer:Xilinx
Product Categories: CPLDs
Lifecycle:Active Active
RoHS:
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