Digital Signal Processing Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 2.1 FPGA and Hardware Features of the different development boards.
FPGA & Hardware
Features
DE1
DE2
UP3
UP2 & 1
Introduction Year
2006
2006
2004
2001 & 1999
FPGA Family
Cyclone II
Cyclone II
Cyclone
Flex10K
Logic Elements
(LEs)
6,000 (1C6) or
12,000 (1C12)
3,744 or 1,152
(UP1)
18,752
35,000
Approximate Max.
Logic Gate Count
1
189,000 (1C6)
or 378,000
118,000 or
63,000(UP1)
500,000
1,000,000
EP1C6Q240C8
or (1C12)
EP1C12Q240C
8
EPF10K70
RC2404 or
EPF10K20
RC2404 (UP1)
FPGA Device Part
Number
EP2C35F672
C6
EP2C20F484C7
18K bits
12K (UP1)
80K or 208K
bits
Memory in bits
204K bits
483K bits
PLLs
4
4
2
No
Integer 18 by 18 bit
Multipliers
26
35
No
No
External
Clocks
48, 66, or
100Mhz
24, 27, 50 Mhz
27, 50Mhz
25Mhz
External SRAM
Memory
256K by 16
bits
256K by 16 bits
64k by 16 bits
No
External SDRAM
Memory
1M by 16 bits
with 4 banks
1M by 16 bits
with 4 banks
1M by 16 bits
No
Ext. Flash
Memory
4M by 8 bits
4M by 8 bits
1M by 8 bits
No
Nios II Processor
SoC
Designs
Supported
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
2.2 The FPGA Board's Memory Features
In addition to the FPGA's internal memory, the newer boards provide several
external ROM and RAM memory devices as seen in Table 2.1. Capacities of
external memory are much larger than the internal memory, but they will have a
slower access time.
FPGA processor cores such as the Nios II used in System-on-a-Chip (SoC)
designs use external memory for program and data memory, and typically use
the FPGA's smaller and faster internal memory for register files and a cache.
Flash and EEPROM are used to provide non-volatile memory storage. The
EPCS1 serial Flash chip is used to automatically load the FPGA's serial
configuration data at power up in final systems where you do not want to
download the board with the ByteBlaster each time power is applied.
1
This is only a very crude estimate of the number of equivalent two input NANDs in the FPGA's hardware
design. This should be viewed only as a very rough estimate since any real design cannot use every feature
of every logic element. The estimates given here also include additional gates in the total count to account
for the FPGA's embedded memory blocks and hardware multipliers. Such crude gate count estimates can
also vary by a factor of two or more between different FPGA venders for a similar device and they are
rarely used now in industry.
