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Checking Out FPGA And Stereo Camera Kits
Date Posted: November 18, 2011 08:51 AM
Xilinx may be pushing the envelope with its 28nm FPGAs (see Xilinx Unifies FPGA Line) and its 2.5D Stacked Silicon Interconnect technology (see 10,000 Connections Between FPGA Slices) but its older chips, like the Spartan 6 deliver solid performance and are readily available. As expected, Xilinx had Spartan 6 boards available when the chip arrived (see Eval Kits Speed FPGA Design).
Recently I had my hands on a pare of Spartan 6 boards from Digilent including the Nexys 3 (Fig. 1) and the Atlys (Fig. 2). I checked it out using the dual camera VmodCAM board (Fig. 3) that can be used for a range of imaging applications. The next section details the project while the subsequent sections details the boards.
Digilent sells a range of boards based on everything from Spartan 6 FPGAs to PIC32-based Arduino boards (see PIC32 Arduino Modules) and expansion modules (see Arduino Expands Into More Demanding Applications ). I have even tried one of their robotic platforms PIC32 Robot Provides Modular Platform) based on Microchip's PIC32 microcontroller. These FPGA boards could be used on those platforms.
The Pmod family of modules is also from Digilent. These use standard 6- and 12-pin headers that expose serial and parallel interfaces. The Nexys 3 has four 12-pin ports while the Atlys has one. The Nexys 3 is more suitable to robotics with a 4 digit, 7 segment display. The Atlys lacks on-board displays but has dual HDMI input and output ports
The Nexys 3 has a smaller LX16 Spartan 6 FPGA while the Atlys has a larger LX45 Spartan 6. The LX45 also has PCI Express and four high speed SERDES on-chip. The Atlys really only provides access to on of the SERDES with support via 10/100/1000 Ethernet PHY. The board alsy has an AC-97 audio interface. Both boards can handle MicroBlaze soft core processors.
Both boards have a 68-pin VHDCI connector. This provides access to high speed peripherals like Digilent's VmodCAM module. This is the primary off-board interface. It only provides access to a limited number of FPGA I/Os. The FPGAs have a large number of I/O ports that are not exposed even when taking into account on-board interfaces. Still, the platforms provide easy programming and access to quite a few peripherals.
The hardware arrived without documentation or software because it is all available online. You can check it out without having to buy the hardware. Likewise, these boards use Xilinx's free WebPack version of ISE, Xilinx's FPGA development suite.
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Atlys | Digilent | FPGA | NEXYS 3 | Spartan 6 | stereo camera | VmodCAM | Xilinx