Silica claims to have the first development kit to combine an ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller and a Spartan-6 FPGA on a single board.
The Xynergy board combines an STMicroelectronics STM32F217 controller, which is based on an ARM Cortex-M3 core, with a Xilinx Spartan-6 low-cost FPGA XC6SLX16.
The controller’s FSMC interface enables a parallel 16-bit connection for the FPGA ensuring high-speed data transfer between the two components.
The Cortex-M3 core can be clocked at up to 120MHz and incorporates 1Mbyte flash memory and 128kbyte SRAM.
There is also 1Gbit DDR-3 memory, which is connected to the FPGA, can be made transparent via the FSMC bus, enabling the controller to use it too.
Communications interfaces include Ethernet, USB On-the-Go and CAN as well as SPI, Virtual COM-Port (with a RS232 to USB bridge) and a Micro-SD card slot.
Two 64-pin extension sockets in a standard 2.54 mm grid are provided so that the kit can be plugged onto an optional motherboard with FPGA Mezzanine connectors (FMC).
The kit includes an ST-Link/V2 debug adapter and users are able to select their preferred development software system from a number of approved tool vendors for the STM32F217 – many of them offer restricted versions for free download.
The FPGA can be configured directly using a Xilinx standard download cable or indirectly via the MCU. In addition Xilinx provides its ISE Web-PACK development environment free of charge.
www.silica.com