Evaluate altera max 10 as an option for sensor interfacing
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Description

This fpga might be a good candidate for sensor board interfacing.

Disclaimer

No one checked that it would provide adequate i/o, and power.

Licencing

The "free" web edition covers all max 10 chips:
http://www.altera.com/products/software/quartus-ii/web-edition/qts-we-index.html

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No high speed serial transceiver. Unless increasing clock of LVDS and removing unnecessary LVDS with respect to necessary bandwidth, there is not much to do. Will need Spartan-6 / Artix-7 / Cyclone-IV / Cyclone-V.

Maximum bandwidth from sensor CMV12000 v1 (hey why not CMV12000 v2 with twice the fps :) :) ):
4096 x 3072 x 10-bit x 168 fps ~= 21.2 Gbps

Target FPGAs:XC7Z030-1SBG485: 4 GTX @ max 12.5 Gbps RAW
In order to spare as much GTX as possible we should work at highest possible speed (and therefore take an FPGA for the sensor that has high-speed transceivers). We will however to choose a protocol to transfer data.
I don't think more than 2 of the 4 transceivers of the Z030 can be used for sensor data transmission.
Connectors could be SMAs (instead of current 32 / 64 LVDS pairs on FMC connector)

Transceivers bandwidth (raw)
Spartan-6: GTP up to 3.2 Gbps
Artix-7: GTP up to 6.6 Gbps
Kintex-7: GTX up to 12.5 Gbps
Cyclone IV GX: up to 3.1 Gbps
Cyclone V GT: up to 6.1 Gbps
Arria V GT: up to 10 Gbps

I would focus on 6 Gbps transceivers (or more)

Now all small FPGA don't seem easily available in small volume.
Smallest FPGAs ??
Artix-7: 35T? (smallest should be 15T)
Kintex-7: 70T (smallest which is already quite big in fact)
Cyclone V GT: D5 (smallest which is already quite big in fact)
Arria V GT: C3 (smallest which is already quite big in fact)

What do you think about this?
How important would be this sensor interfacing in the system?

Hello,

Is this feature still in the roadmap?

Regards,
Guerric

sebastian assigned this task to Bertl.Nov 23 2014, 10:28 PM
sebastian added a subscriber: sebastian.

This question sounds like you can answer it :)

Yes, interface board with FPGA is still on the roadmap :)

Best,
Herbert

Bertl closed this task as Resolved.Feb 4 2016, 3:37 PM

Altera MAX 10 doesn't seem to be a good option as far as we checked.