Numato Opsis is an Open Source Hardware FPGA Board with 6 Video Inputs and Outputs (Crowdfunding)

Numato Lab is a Bangalore based company specializing in MCU and FPGA boards such as the low cost Mimas V2 Spartan 6 board, and their latest board is also based on a Spartan 6 FPGA, but a more powerful part with LX45T FPGA, and targets video applications with two HDMI inputs, two HDMI outputs, one DisplayPort output, and one DisplayPort input, among other interfaces. Instead of simply listing specifications of Numato Opsis, I’ll reproduce a table – drawn by Numato – showing Opsis features and specifications against some other FPGA video platforms. Opsis miniSpartan6+ Mixxeo Atlys Nexys Anvyl CVK 2.0 AVDB Make Numato ScarabHardware M‑Labs Digilent Digilent Digilent TED OmniTek License Open Open Open Closed Closed Closed Closed Closed Cost USD $349 USD $105 no stock USD $419 USD $499 USD $539 USD $2,995 USD $999 FPGA Fab Xilinx Xilinx Xilinx Xilinx Xilinx Xilinx Xilinx Altera Family Spartan‑6 Spartan‑6 Spartan‑6 Spartan‑6 Artix‑7 Spartan‑6 Spartan‑6 Cyclone V Part LX45T […]

Parallella Desktop Computer Board Price Drops to $99 (Temporary)

Parallella “super computer” board with Xilinx Zynq-7010 ARM+FPGA SoC and Adapteva’s 16-core Epiphany coprocessor may have started at $99 uring their Kickstarter campaign, but once the board became more broadly available, price started at $119 for the microserver version, and $149 for the desktop computer version which adds a micro HDMI port, a micro USB port, and some expansion I/Os. But to get rid of some stock, the company has decided to temporary decrease the desktop version price to $99 on Amazon. Let’s remind us of the desktop computer board specifications: SoC – Xilinx Zynq Z7010 dual-Core ARM Cortex A9 with 512KB L2 Shared Cache + Artix-7 FPGA with 28K logic cells Coprocessor – 16-core Epiphany-III processor System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – micro SD slot + 128Mb quad SPI flash Connectivity – 10/100/1000M Ethernet Video Output – 1x micro HDMI USB – 1x micro USB host port Expansion […]

Armadeus Systems APF6_SP SoM Combines Freescale i.MX6 Processor and Altera Cyclone V GX FPGA

Xilinx Zynq and Altera Cyclone V are both SoC families combining an ARM processor (Hard Processor System  – HPS) with FPGA fabric into a single chip. But Armadeus Systems, a French company designing industrial ARM Linux processor modules, has unveiled a new module where the CPU and FPGA are two separate chips, namely Freescale i.MX6 (single to quad) and Altera Cyclone V GX FPGA, in order to provide more flexibility, and extra features like a GPU with OpenCL support, an hardware video processing unit, a dedicated SATA port, and so on. Armadeus APF6_SP SoM specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX6 single, dual or quad core Cortex A9 processor with Vivante GPUs FPGA – Altera Cyclone V GX (C4/C5/C7/C9) System Memory 512MB to 1GB DDR3 32-bit @ 800 MHz for i.MX6 Solo or Duallite 512MB to 2GB DDR3 64-bit @ 1066MHz for i.MX6 Dual or Quad Optional up to 768MB RAM dedicated […]

lowRISC Open Source SoC Project Announces its First Release with Tutorials for Simulators and Zedboard

lowRISC project aims to produce a completely open-source SoC (System-on-Chip) based on the 64-bit RISC-V instruction set architecture, as well as a corresponding development board, thus eventually producing a fully open hardware systems. The project has now announced its first release “tagged memory preview release” with a tutorial explaining how this has all been designed, and how to run simulations with software tools, or FPGA boards such as Zedboard.   The project is based on Rocket core, written in Chisel language by the RISC-V team at UC Berkeley. Chisel can generate code to produce a cycle-accurate C++ emulator, Verilog optimised for FPGAs or Verilog for use in an ASIC flow.If you want to try it out, you’ll need a Linux machine, preferably running Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, with GNU GCC 4.8 installed, and follow the tutorial in order to get the source code, and build tools such as riscv64-unknown-elf-gcc compiler, and […]

$50 Mimas V2 Spartan 6 FPGA Development Board Comes with a VGA Port, 64MB RAM

Just last week, I wrote about miniSpartan3, an FPGA board powered by Xilinx Spartan 3A. It costs as low as $25, features an HDMI output port, but lacks RAM. Numato Lab’s Mimas V2 is another low cost FPGA board with a more powerful Spartan 6 FPGA, 512 Mb LPDDR memory, and instead of HDMI output, a VGA port has been included on the board. The board can be used for prototype development, signal processing, learning digital electronics and as an educational tool for schools and universities. Technical specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan XC6SLX9 in CSG324 package System Memory – 512Mb LPDDR @ 166 MHz (MT46H32M16LF/W949D6CBHX6E) Storage – 16 Mb SPI flash memory (M25P16) + micro SD card slot Video Output – VGA connector Audio – Stereo jack USB – 1x mini USB 2.0 port for on-board flash programming Expansion Headers – Four 6×2 header with access to 32 I/O pins, […]

miniSpartan3 is a $25 Xilinx Spartan 3A FPGA Board with HDMI Output

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 […]

Xilinx Zynq-Z7015 FPGA + ARM based System-on-Modules Include High Speed Transceivers

There’s a fair amount of low cost boards powered by Xilinx Zynq Z-7010 and Z-7020 with dual core Cortex A9 processor and Artix-7 FPGA, but those who wanted to have PCIe ports or high speed transceivers had to go with the higher-end Xilinx Z-7030/7040/7050 with Kintex-7 FPGA fabric for a much higher cost. But Xilinx introduced Zynq Z-7015 late last year, a low cost Artix-7 FPGA + Cortex A9 SoC that also adds four 6.25Gbps SerDes ports and one PCIe Gen2 x4 integrated block. At least two modules based on the new SoC are currently available with DAVE Embedded Systems’ BORA Xpress  and Trenz Electronic TE0715 Series. DAVE Zynq XC7Z015/XC7Z030 BORA Xpress BORA Xpress specifications: SoC Xilinx ZYNQ XC7Z015 dual ARM Cortex-A9 @ up to 866MHz with Artix-7 FPGA with 74K logic cells, 46K LUTs, 92K Flip flops, 380 KB RAM. 32 KB I-cache, 32 KB D-cache, 512 KB L2 […]

Embedded Systems Conference 2015 Schedule – May 6-7, 2015

The Embedded Systems Conference took the name “Design West” for a couple of years, but this year, there’s no mention of Design West, and the Embedded System Conference 2015 will take place in Boston, MA, US on May 6-7, 2015. The 2-day event will have a demo hall, and well as sessions divided into 8 tracks: Connected Devices and the IoT Embedded Software Design Hardware: Design, I/O and Interfacing Prototyping Embedded Systems Design Software: Design, Languages, & Quality Fantastical Theater Teardowns The full schedule has now been posted, and I’ll build a virtual schedule with some of the sessions provided. Wednesday May 6, 2015 8:00 – 8:45 – Understanding Google/Nest Thread by Michael Anderson, Chief Scientist, The PTR Group, Inc. The IoT will live or die based on its connectivity. In examining existing wireless protocols, Google/Nest found most of them lacking. In order to address the needs for low-power wireless […]

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