Sipeed has launched another FPGA board part of their Tang family with the Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock powered by a GOWIN GW5AST SoC with 138K logic elements as well as an 800 MHz AE350_SOC RISC-V hardcore unit, and featuring a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, DVI Rx and Tx, two SFP+ cages, a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, and more.
We’ve previously seen companies like AMD (Xilinx) and Microchip produce FPGA SoCs with hard cores such as the Zynq Ultrascale+ family (4x Cortex-A53) or the PolarFire MPSoC (4x 64-bit SiFive U54 RISC-V cores), but it’s the first time I see GOWIN introduce an FPGA + RISC-V SoC, as all the previous parts that came to my attention were FPGA devices.
Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock specifications:
- System-on-Module – Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro
- SoC FPGA – GOWIN GW5AST-LV138FPG676A with
- 138,240 LUT4
- 1,080 Kb Shadow SRAM (SSRAM)
- 6,120 Kb Block SRAM (BSRAM)
- Number of BSRAM – 340
- 298x DSP slices
- 12x PLLs
- 16x global clocks
- 24x HCLK
- 8x transceivers at 270Mbps to 12.5Gbps
- Hard CPU – 32-bit RISC-V AE350_SOC @ 800 MHz
- System Memory – 1GB DDR3
- Storage – 2x 128Mbit Flash
- Carrier board interface – 3x board-to-board connectors
- Debugging – 8-pin JTAG + UART connector
- Misc – Various keys and LEDs
- Dimensions – 70 x 50 mm
- SoC FPGA – GOWIN GW5AST-LV138FPG676A with
- Storage – MicroSD card slot, EEPROM
- Video Input/Output
- DVI Tx and DVi Rx ports
- LCD connector
- 2x MIPI CSI connector for cameras
- DVP camera connector
- Audio
- Speaker header
- 3.5mm stereo audio jack
- Microphone array connector
- Networking
- 2x SPF+ cages
- Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port
- USB – 1x USB Type-C “Soft USB” port
- Expansion
- 3x Pmod connectors
- PCIe 3.0 x4 edge connector
- 40-pin GPIO header
- M.2 B-key socket
- Debugging – USB-C port for JTAG and UART
- Misc – Power switch, 1x RGB LED, 6x user LEDs, fan connector
- Power Supply – 12V via DC jack
- Dimensions – 147.1 x 93.2 mm
The board is programmable with the usual Gowin IDE, but the wiki is currently only available in Chinese language with the English translation likely to come a little later. Alternatively, you can access several code samples on GitHub showing how to use the DVI interfaces, LCD interface, camera interfaces, PCIe, SFP+ cages, and so on. There’s nothing that I can find about the RISC-V core on the Sipeed website, but GOWIN provides various developer guides and tools for the AE350_SOC which you can only access after registering to the company’s website.
The Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock is available for pre-order for $195 on Aliexpress with a 12V/2A power supply and cables, but there’s a $20 “store coupon” bringing the price down to $175. There’s also an LCD kit for $209, and the Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro system-on-module without carrier board is offered for $119 before the $20 discount. Deliveries are scheduled to start at the end of October. You may follow the progress on Twitter/X.
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.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
