FPGA Drive FMC

This is the second part of a three part tutorial series in which we will create a PCI Express Root Complex design in Vivado with the goal of connecting a PCIe NVMe solid-state drive to our FPGA. Part 1: Microblaze PCI Express Root Complex design in Vivado Part 2: Zynq PCI Express Root Complex design in Vivado (this tutorial) Part 3: Connecting an SSD to an FPGA running PetaLinux In this second part of the tutorial series, we will build a Zynq based design targeting the PicoZed 7Z030 and PicoZed FMC Carrier Card V2. [Read More]

This is the first part of a three part tutorial series in which we will go through the steps to create a PCI Express Root Complex design in Vivado, with the goal of being able to connect a PCIe end-point to our FPGA. We will test the design on hardware by connecting a PCIe NVMe solid-state drive to our FPGA using the FPGA Drive adapter. Part 1: Microblaze PCI Express Root Complex design in Vivado (this tutorial) [Read More]

Bring-up of the first FPGA Drive with the Kintex-7 KC705 Evaluation board went nice and smoothly today. In the photo below you’ll see the KC705 and FPGA Drive adapter which is loaded with a Samsung V-NAND 950 Pro. The solid-state drive is an M.2 form factor, NVM Express, 4-lane PCI Express drive with 256GB of storage. A little intro to NVM Express. NVM Express or NVMe is an interfacing specification for accessing SSDs over a PCI Express bus. [Read More]

With the first prototypes on the way, it’s time to take a closer look at what exactly FPGA Drive is and how it can help you to develop new disruptive technologies with FPGAs and SSDs. Here’s what you need to know in 3 points: FPGA Drive enables you to connect a high-speed Solid State Drive (SSD) to an FPGA FPGA Drive delivers high-capacity, extreme-throughput non-volatile storage to FPGA development boards FPGA Drive connects a 4-lane PCI Express bus between your FPGA and SSD The 3D rendered image shows the following key features: [Read More]

Very excited to be showing off my new Samsung SSD 950 in the M.2 form factor. This tiny solid-state drive has a PCI Express Gen3 x 4-lane interface for a more direct connection to the CPU which enables a much higher throughput than a SATA interface. According to Samsung: It outperforms SATA SSDs by over 4.5 times in sequential read and by over 2.5 times in sequential write, delivering the speeds of 2,500 MB/s and 1,500 MB/s respectively. [Read More]