Lark Board Powered by Altera Cyclone V SX ARM Cortex A9 + FPGA SoC

Farnell/Element14 has quietly announced Lark Board from their subsidiary Embest Technology in September. The board is powered by an Altera Cyclone V ARM Cortex-A9 dual-core + FPGA processor with high speed transceivers, runs Debian 7.4, and targets medical instruments, video surveillance and industrial control applications.

Lark board specifications:

• SoC – Altera Cyclone V SX (5CSXFC6D6F31I7N) with a dual core Cortex A9 processor (HPS – Hard Processor System) @ 800 MHz, FPGA fabric including up to 110K logic cells (LE), and high speed transceivers (2 PCIe hard IPs and 9 3Gbps transceivers)
• System Memory – 1GB DDR3 SDRAM for HPS, 1GB DDR3 SDRAM for FPGA
• Storage –  4GB eMMC Flash + micro SD card slot
• Audio/Video Interfaces – HDMI, VGA, and 24-bit LCD interface supporting 4-wire touch screen
• Data Transfer Interfaces:
  • High-resolution serial digital interface (SDI) that supports SMD standard interface and provides a SDI TX and a SDI RX
  • 12-bit digital camera input
  • 2x 12-bit high-speed ADC interfaces that support SMA input
  • PCIe x4 interface for PCIe x4, PCIe x2 and PCIe x1 adapter cards
  • RJ45 interface that supports RGMII gigabit Ethernet
  • 4x high-speed USB2.0 Host interfaces
  • 40-pin FPGA expansion interface for LVDS, RSDS, SLVS, mini-LVDS signals
  • 40-pin HPS expansion IO for I2C, SPI, QSPI, UART, GPIO signals
• Debugging Interfaces
  • On-board USB Blaster II (Mini USB Type B)
  • 10-pin JTAG interface can be used to connect an external USB Blaster
• Misc – Reset button and 5 user-defined buttons, RTC
• Power – 12V~30V round DC power jack and ATX 4-pin standard power connector
• Dimensions – 180 mm x 120 mm (10-layer PCB)
• Temperature Range – 0~70°C (operating)

The company provides a binary image and source code based on Debian 7.4 with u-boot 2013.01.01, and Linux 3.10. The board can boot from either a micro SD card or the eMMC. Documentation includes a user’s manual, a quick start guide, schematics (PDF), sample applications, as well as datasheets for the SoC and other components.

Lark board is available now for $799 on Embest website where you can also find documentation, the OS image and source code. It’s also listed on Newark/Element14 and Aliexpress for around $900.

Thanks to Nanik for the tip.

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.

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