COLIBRI a low cost FPGA development board

Colibri is a simple development board useful to evaluate the huge potentiality of FPGA devices

The COLIBRI devboard

"The Actel ProASIC3 flash-based FPGA chip offers a breakthrough in power, price, performance, density, and features for today's most demanding high-volume applications" (Ref. Actel web site http://www.actel.com). The Acme Systems COLIBRI board is the smallest and cheaper devboard available to evaluate the Actel ProASIC3 FPGA model A3P250 (250Kgates) or A3P1000 (1000K gates).

Two completely separated address banks of 256K x 16 bits CMOS SRAM with 12ns of access time which allow fast data collecting capabilities and four 20x2 pin strips 2.54 mm (100 mils) pitch to have a comfortable access to the FPGA I/O lines.

The I/O lines deliver signals to/from the FPGA fabric logic with performance of more than 300 MHz for signals and standard 3.3Volts logic levels with LVDS capable interfaces.

A JTAG connector fully compatible with the Actel Flash Pro3 is available to program the FPGA from the Libero IDE tools.

This is the complete schematic file of the Colibri board: Colibri schematic where you can find the reference between external pinout and FPGA I/O pins.

Libero - The Integrated Design Environment (IDE) for FPGA programming

To design your hardware on the FPGA, it is available from the Actel web site a renewable 1 year free license of Libero. With Libero it is possible to edit, synthesize and simulate your FPGA application starting from VHDL/Verilog code obtaining an object file that can be transferred in the FPGA Flash memory through the Actel JTAG programmer available with the COLIBRI Starter Kit. Visit the Actel Libero IDE website and get your free copy of Libero IDE.

Using the COLIBRI for Hard Real Time appliance on Linux

The COLIBRI Devboard has the same footprint of the Linux embedded SBC FOX Board LX or FOX Board G20.  

It is possible to mount the COLIBRI Devboard over or under the FOX Board LX or Fox Board G20 to realize in hardware fast custom peripherals using VHDL or Verilog hardware description languages within Libero.

This enables a different approach for Real Time projects based on Linux. Instead of forcing the operating system to manage real time events and control fast peripherals and protocols, the aim is to couple the Linux processor with a fast, reprogrammable hardware logic so as to have a standard interface towards the operating system and with specialized programmed logic towards the external hardware.

This allows to manage with the hard real time part of the application against fast hardware peripherals using custom logic at hardware speed and to free the operating system from the stress to follow directly the fast peripherals.

If you also consider the possibility to reprogram the hardware logic, the dynamic reconfiguration of the hardware could bring new opportunities in the design patterns where the frontier between hardware and software is easily adapted to the real necessities, and flexibility becomes a real asset for the electronic and information technology designer.

The COLIBRI Devboard is a good opportunity to experiment fast custom logic circuits in relation to a Linux platform thus enabling users to develop the hardware they need by themselves with the possibility to reconfigure it at will, even from remote. This opens a whole field of opportunities towards hardware and software development.

Low cost FPGA development board Colibri is a simple development board useful to evaluate the huge potentiality of the Actel ProASIC3 FPGA device model A3P250 with 250Kgates. It is usable as a stand-alone component or as a hardware co-processor for the Linux embedded single board computer FOX Board LX Price: € 65,00 Notes: 3.3VDC power supply not included Code: COLIBRI250 More info...

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http://www.acmesystems.it -

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