Design Article
Semiconductor Evaluation Leveraging COTS FPGAs and Connectors
Clive Maxfield
1/3/2013 5:30 PM EST
This is a strange coincidence, because just the other day I was talking to a design engineer friend who was moaning and groaning about problems he was having with regard to evaluating components from different semiconductor and sensor vendors (he designs and builds wireless mesh monitor and control nodes that have all sorts of sensors and actuators plugged into them).
And now I discover that there's a jolly interesting whitepaper on the Opal Kelly website that addresses just this issue (Click Here to see this paper).
The idea is to use your PC as the application host and to leverage a commercially-available off-the-shelf (COTS) base board coupled with a small customized application card, as illustrated below:
One of the examples discussed in this paper is to use an Opal Kelly Shuttle LX1 as the base board as illustrated below. The Shuttle LXI includes a Low Pin-Count (LPC) FMC connector and is said to be the industry’s smallest and least expensive FMC carrier card (base board).
About the size of a credit card, the Shuttle LX1 board includes a high-speed USB 2.0 controller, a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, and 128 Megabytes of DDR2 SDRAM. Meanwhile, this example also features a CMOS image sensor presented on a mezzanine card that plugs directly into the Shuttle LX1 board.
Of course I've presented only a tempting teaser here – you really need to check out the full-up version of the 17-page whitepaper on the Opal Kelly Website by Clicking Here.
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where – in addition to my Max's Cool Beans blogs – you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).
And now I discover that there's a jolly interesting whitepaper on the Opal Kelly website that addresses just this issue (Click Here to see this paper).
The idea is to use your PC as the application host and to leverage a commercially-available off-the-shelf (COTS) base board coupled with a small customized application card, as illustrated below:
One of the examples discussed in this paper is to use an Opal Kelly Shuttle LX1 as the base board as illustrated below. The Shuttle LXI includes a Low Pin-Count (LPC) FMC connector and is said to be the industry’s smallest and least expensive FMC carrier card (base board).
About the size of a credit card, the Shuttle LX1 board includes a high-speed USB 2.0 controller, a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, and 128 Megabytes of DDR2 SDRAM. Meanwhile, this example also features a CMOS image sensor presented on a mezzanine card that plugs directly into the Shuttle LX1 board.
Of course I've presented only a tempting teaser here – you really need to check out the full-up version of the 17-page whitepaper on the Opal Kelly Website by Clicking Here.
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where – in addition to my Max's Cool Beans blogs – you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).
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