Last year, Scarab Hardware launched miniSpartan 6+, a low cost FPGA board featuring Xilinx Spartan6 LX9, on Kickstarter. Since the, they’ve made a third iteration of the board with either Spartan6 LX9 or LX25 and an extra HDMI port, and developed miniSpartan3, a smaller and cheaper FPGA board called miniSpartan3 powered by Xilinx Spartan 3A XC3A50 or XC3A200 FPGA.
miniSpartan3 specifications:
- FPGA – Xilinx Spartan 3A XC3A50 (50K logic gates) or XC3A200 (200K logic gates)
- Storage – 4Mbit SPI Flash
- Video / Audio Output – HDMI
- USB – Micro USB OTG port
- Debugging – On-board USB JTAG programmer; on-board USB to Serial Interface
- I/Os via breadboard friendly through holes
- 4-channel ADC running at 200 KSPS with 8 bit resolution.
- 41 Digital I/O pins.
- Misc – 3 LEDs for debugging; 2 DIP switches.
- Dimensions – 6.35 x 4.06 cm
They have not provided much details about development tools, but it’s quite likely these will be the same as for miniSpartan6+, namely Xilinx ISE Tool, or the company’s own Scarab IDE for Linux or Windows. There’s also a github account with the tools, and they’ll probably upload miniSpartan3 hardware files once the board ships.
miniSpartan3 can be pre-ordered for $25 to $35 respectively for the XC3A50 and XC3A200 version, with delivery scheduled for May 15 and beyond. You may find a few more details on miniSpartan3 product page.
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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