Comparison of Zynq SoMs

Comparison of Zynq SoMs
In the last year or so, there has been an explosion in the availability of System-on-Modules (SoMs) featuring the popular FPGA+ARM combo Zynq-7000 SoC from Xilinx. I’ve always promoted the idea that FPGAs and SoCs allow for faster design cycles and rapid proof-of-concept, but these SoMs take that advantage to another level. Let me explain why. In the past, I would handle most projects by doing a proof-of-concept on an evaluation board, then designing a custom board that integrates all the required components onto a single PCB. [Read More]

Comparison of 7 Series FPGA boards for PCIe

Comparison of 7 Series FPGA boards for PCIe
One of my most common customer requests is to speed up execution of a software application using FPGA hardware acceleration. If the application runs on a PC or server, you can achieve impressive performance gains by using off-the-shelf FPGA development boards for PCI Express. Here is a comparison of the available 7 Series FPGA boards for PCI Express applications: AC701 Artix-7 KC705 Kintex-7 VC707 Virtex-7 VC709 Virtex-7 $1295 $1695 $3495 $4995 XC7A200T-2FBG676C XC7K325T-2FFG900C XC7VX485T-2FFG1761 XC7VX690T-2FFG1761C 4-lane Gen2 PCIe 8-lane Gen2 PCIe 8-lane Gen2 PCIe 8-lane Gen3 PCIe 1GB DDR3 SODIMM 1GB DDR3 SODIMM 1GB DDR3 SODIMM 4GB DDR3 SODIMM x2 8Kb EEPROM 8Kb EEPROM 8Kb EEPROM 1KB EEPROM No BPI Flash 128MB BPI Flash 128MB BPI Flash 32MB BPI Flash 32MB Quad SPI 16MB Quad SPI 16MB Quad SPI No Quad SPI Flash SD Card slot SD Card slot SD Card slot No SD No LPC FMC 1x LPC FMC No LPC FMC No LPC FMC 1x HPC FMC (*) 1x HPC FMC (*) 2 x HPC FMC 1x HPC FMC (*) 1x SFP 1x SFP+ 1x SFP+ 4x SFP/SFP+ 1GB Ethernet 1GB Ethernet 1Gb Ethernet No Ethernet No USB No USB No USB No USB UART over USB UART over USB UART over USB UART over USB HDMI out HDMI out HDMI out No Video XADC header XADC header AMS port No Analog (*) Note: These HPC FMC connectors are only partially populated which means that they wont be able to support all standard FMCs. [Read More]

Comparison of Zynq boards

If you’re interested in testing out the Zynq-7000 SoC from Xilinx there are now quite a few options available, so it comes down to a question of features vs price. Below I’ve listed the most important features of the available boards side-by-side to help you make the right decision for yourself or your company. I’ll also go into what I think of each board before we look at the boards in terms of their popularity. [Read More]

List and comparison of FPGA companies

With the top two FPGA companies taking up 89% of the FPGA market, you can be forgiven for thinking there was no one else out there. Xilinx and Altera have done a good job of defending the duopoly but a few companies are gradually winning market share by targeting specific applications and sub-markets. Here is a list of the top 5 FPGA companies by revenue. Chart: FPGA Market Share by 2010 revenue in Millions of USDDescription: This chart compares the 2010 revenues of Xilinx, Altera, Lattice Semiconductor, Microsemi and QuickLogic companies. [Read More]