EBV Elektronik, an Avnet (NYSE:AVT) company, today announced the availability of the DBF3C120, a Cyclone® III FGPA-based reference design jointly developed with Altera Corporation. The DBF3C120 brings enhanced design flexibility to a broad range of applications requiring high processing power combined with high-level integration.
The DBF3C120 combines the flexibility and power savings of Altera’s Cyclone III FPGAs with seamless IP integration on a development platform supporting all relevant I/O standards, enabling direct connection to the industrial world. As part of the EBV SnakeBytes reference design platform, the DBF3C120 complements the Altera Stratix® II FPGA-based DBF2S30 board, which is already part of the SnakeBytes family. The main components of the SnakeBytes reference design platform are a processor board, an FPGA-based peripheral/co-processor board (the Stratix II-based DBF2S30 or the new Cyclone III-based DBF3C120) and multiple add-on boards for peripherals and I/O configuration. With this flexible approach, the user has the choice to select the solution which best meets their performance, logic and cost requirements.
By using Cyclone III FPGAs, the new DBF3C120 provides huge logic resources with 120K logic elements (LEs). Additionally, the FPGA offers seven I/O slots with 64 I/O signals to address the various interfaces in industrial environments. Designers can immediately start their evaluation of the DBF3C120 with Altera’s Quartus® II Web Edition design software, which can be downloaded from the Altera website at www.altera.com.
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Press Release: EBV Elektronik Presents Altera Cyclone III FPGA-Based Reference
Rudy Van Parijs, Vice President Technical Development
"SnakeBytes provides the options to connect the processor module and the FPGA board via PCI bus or via a local bus. Using the local bus between the DBF8349 module and the DBF3C120 board, two independent interfaces are available. The Memory Mapped interface offers direct connection of peripherals to the FPGA board with highest data throughput. The Avalon interface allows building a peripheral system using Altera’s advanced SOPC Builder tool without HDL programming," says Rudy Van Parijs, Vice President Technical Development at EBV Elektronik.
“Over the years, we have worked closely with EBV to develop a comprehensive reference design platform, enabling customers to develop high-performance building and industrial automation systems,” said Michael Samuelian, director of Altera’s industrial business unit. “The latest DBF3C120 Cyclone III-based reference board nicely complements the SnakeBytes reference design platform by offering a low power FPGA with high functionality.”
The DBF3C120 Cyclone III FPGA-based development board allows for the implementation of Altera’s Nios® II embedded processor. Combined with an FPGA, the Nios II embedded processor can perform functions that typically would require multiple devices. This kind of product implementation provides superior flexibility and a high level of integration density at a reasonable cost. Applications that can benefit from this solution include variable drive, motion control and industrial networking applications, as well as, communications and high-reliability equipment.
The DBF3C120 features Linux BSP, a PCI interface solution based on the PCI Core from Altera and several industry-standard interfaces such as CAN, RS485, RS232 and 24V I/O. The I/O system based on the Cyclone III FPGA can be easily configured to meet client-specific I/O requirements, while at the same time offering a high degree of computing power. The processor baseboard is equipped with all the necessary functions to run the FPGA features, such as power supply, clocking, reset generation, and a 64 MBit configuration device. Several IP-cores are delivered with the board like Ethernet MAC and CAN controller. The board is also available with a USB-Blaster™ download cable and a Nios II license.
