Before micro-controllers or processors are manufactured, simulation is performed in (usually) expensive boards based on FPGA chips from Altera or Xilinx, and once designers have found the system to work as expected, they can move to the next phase and work on the actual silicon. ARM has just released V2M-MPS2 Cortex-M Prototyping System for MCU / SoC / ASIC designers working on Cortex-M processors. Key features: Altera Cyclone V FPGA with ~150K LE 4x 2MB ZBTRAM (32-bit each, with two of them forming a 64-bit memory). ZBT = Zero Bus Latency 16MB PSRAM (16-bit) Touch screen LCD module Range of hardware interfaces – UART, VGA (4 bit per color), SPI, audio (I2S), Ethernet, LEDs, buttons I/O expansion ports (GPIO) FPGA images for Cortex-M processors Example project for Cortex-M0 DesignStart (processor IP has to be licensed separately) USB connection for downloading FPGA images and program image to micro SD card on board […]
Terasic’s Altera DE1-SoC Board Based on Cyclone V Dual Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC Sells for $150 Up
A few months ago, Terasic unveiled its SoCKit powered by Altera Cyclone V dual Cortex A9 + FPGA. They’ve now announced a cheaper version will a less powerful Cyclone V SoC and lower specs (e.g. less RAM, only one sensor, etc…) that sells for as low as $150 for educational or academic purposes, and $199 for the rest of us. Altera DE1-SoC Board specifications: FPGA Device Cyclone V SoC 5CSEMA5F31 Device Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 (HPS – Hard Processor System) 85K Programmable Logic Elements 4,450 Kbits embedded memory 6 Fractional PLLs 2 Hard Memory Controllers Configuration and Debug Quad Serial Configuration device – EPCQ256 on FPGA (EPCQ = Erasable Programmable Configurable Quad-SPI device) On-Board USB Blaster II (Normal type B USB connector) Memory Device 64MB (32Mx16) SDRAM on FPGA 1GB (2x256Mx16) DDR3 SDRAM on HPS 128MB QSPI Flash on HPS (QSPI Flash does not come pre-installed out of factory) Micro SD […]

