$249 Terasic SoCKit Development Kit Features Altera Cyclone V SX Dual Core A9 + FPGA SoC

There seems to be a lot a development going on around dual core A9 + FPGA SoCs from Xilinx or Altera these days, and Terasic has recently announced SoCKit, a development board based on Altera Cyclone V SX SoC with 2GB RAM (1GB for ARM cores, 1GB for FPGA), 110K logic elements, etc…

Terasic SoCKit Development Board (Click to Enlarge)

Here are the specifications listed on Terasic website:

FPGA Device – Cyclone V SX SoC—5CSXFC6D6F31C8NES:
- 110K LEs, 41509 ALMs
- 5140 M10K memory blocks
- 6 FPGA PLLs and 3 HPS PLLs
- 2 Hard Memory Controllers
- 3.125G Transceivers
ARM-based hard processor system (HPS) @ 800 MHz, Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore Processor with 512 KB of shared L2 cache, 64 KB of scratch RAM, Multiport SDRAM controller (DDR2, DDR3, LPDDR1, and LPDDR2), and 8-channel direct memory access (DMA) controller
Configuration and Debug:
- Quad Serial Configuration device – EPCQ256 for FPGA
- On-Board USB Blaster II (micro USB type B connector)
Memory Device:s
- 1GB (2x256MBx16) DDR3 SDRAM on FPGA
- 1GB (2x256MBx16) DDR3 SDRAM on HPS
- 128MB QSPI Flash on HPS
- Micro SD Card Socket on HPS
- EPCQ256 Flash on FPGA
Communication:
- USB 2.0 OTG (ULPI interface with micro USB type AB connector)
- USB to UART (micro USB type B connector)
- 10/100/1000 Ethernet

Connectors:
- One HSMC (8-channel Transceivers, Configurable I/O standards 1.5/1.8/2.5/3.3V)
- One LTC connector (One Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) Master ,one I2C and one GPIO interface )

Display – 24-bit VGA DAC, 128×64 dots LCD Module with Backlight
Audio – 24-bit CODEC, Line-in, line-out, and microphone-in jacks
Switches, Buttons and LEDs:
- 8 User Keys (FPGA x4 ; HPS x 4)
- 8 User Switches (FPGA x4 ; HPS x 4)
- 8 User LEDs (FPGA x4 ; HPS x 4)
- 2 HPS Reset Buttons (HPS_RSET_n and HPS_WARM_RST_n)

Sensors – G-Sensor on HPS, temperature Sensor on FPGA
Power – 12V DC input
Dimensions – 150x110x47 mm

The development kit comes with the board, a quick start guide, a 12V power adapter, an Ethernet Cat 5e cable, and two type A to type B USB cables.

The user manual and CD ROM are available for download on the company website, but you’ll find even more resources on RocketBoard.org such as hardware files (Schematics, BoM, …), and details about Linux, and “VIP” (Video IP) source code for the demo shown in the video below.

Terasic SoCKit development kit can be pre-ordered now for $249. The company also claims you can get one for free if you attend one of workshops ($99) organized by Arrow in Europe or North America. But none are scheduled now, so the promotion has probably ended. Free Electrons guys attended one of the workshops in France, and wrote about it. Workshops registrations are now open for several locations in Asia, and it’s free, but does not include a devkit.

You can find more information on Terasic SoCKit page.

Thanks to Victor (aka Galland).

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.