Spartan 3E FPGA Board

[Cyrus]

Hi,

Does anyone know what the XUP is (Stand for) in Xilinx SPARTAN-3E XUP. I heard its a licence to be used with labview. Does this board need a licence to work with labview ? If I buy this from here http://uk.farnell.co...n-3e/dp/1605826 will I be able to use it with labview without any problems ?

Would you recommond this board ? I`m trying to use such a board to be used as a mini computer (CPU) on-board air vechile.

This also has cought my eyes but not sure if it functions fully with labview :

http://uk.farnell.com/altera/dk-cycii-2c20n/kit-fpga-cyclone-ii-development/dp/1560812

Thanks

Edited August 19, 2009 by Cyrus

[Satype]

XUP stands for Xilinx University Program. You will most likely be unable to use that board with LabVIEW FPGA except in the off chance that you are a student at a university which participates in the Xilinx University Program. But, just in case you would like some more information on the XUP agreement and Spartan-3E board, visit this site http://digital.ni.com/express.nsf/bycode/spartan3e There is a big agreement process before you are permitted to download the driver which will then let the board be targeted in LabVIEW as an FPGA target device.

Personally though, I own that Spartan-3E board just for FPGA experimentation, and it is an excellent choice for getting started with FPGA design. I would also recommend the NEXYS2 board from Digilent Inc. www.digilentinc.com It is very similar to the XUP board (which doesn't require you to be a student to purchase) but without some of the extra bells & whistles, like different RAM choices, 2 line display, rotary encoder, ethernet. It is meant to be used for embedded development with a softcore microprocessor, like Xilinx's Microblaze although the non-free Xilinx EDK will be required to use Microblaze.

I don't know much about Altera development, especially with regard to embedded development on their systems, but I think Xilinx has been making steady improvements in their software and their hardware is always top notch.

[Cyrus]

I tried filling out the NI form to download the driver and I could. Do I need anything else apart from the board itself?

Edited August 20, 2009 by Cyrus

[Satype]

If you already have the LabVIEW FPGA module then you will be ready to go! It really is a great setup, the USB cable handles all the traffic and the loading of the bitfile to the FPGA, so you stay in the LabVIEW environment the whole time.

[Cyrus]

If you already have the LabVIEW FPGA module then you will be ready to go! It really is a great setup, the USB cable handles all the traffic and the loading of the bitfile to the FPGA, so you stay in the LabVIEW environment the whole time.

Great . I do have the FPGA module so Ill go ahead getting myself one of them board

Thanks

Just one more thing , which version of the chip you have ? 500K or .. ?

I found the 1600K version from here

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Xilinx-Spartan-3E-1600-Development-Board-1600K-gates_W0QQitemZ350237433942QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_comp_laptop?hash=item518bc72056&_trksid=p3286.m63.l1177

dont know if its a good choice.

[Satype]

500K, it has been enough gates for anything that I've tried to throw at it. I'm fairly sure that the driver only supports the 500K as I think the 500K is the XUP version.

I just checked in the resource specification for the driver, it specifically calls out the 500K version.

Just for kicks, I've found that this file is kind of interesting to look at: LabView (version)\targets\ni\fpga\xupspartan3e\resource.xml

[Cyrus]

Alright , I just get the one from Farnell , 500k version.

Have you interface a camera with it ?

The VGA port is output , the USB port is for programming , dont know what interface would work if I want to connect a camera to it .

[Satype]

Well, this may be a good start VDEC1 Video Decoder Board if your camera has an NTSC or PAL component, composite, or S-video output. If your camera is digital, a custom bus may have to be designed but it would probably be something similar to the code used to interface with the A/D on the VDEC1 board. I have seen a camera control used before with an FPGA which used an I2C bus that synced with an 8-bit parallel data port. The cameras in that case were just CMOS image sensors.