Re: [myhdl-list] zedboard

[Christopher F. <chr...@gm...>]

On 5/18/2015 5:32 PM, Edward Vidal wrote:
> Henry or Anyone else running a Zedboard, First thanks to Jose M. his
> help on the FSM delay was right on! You indicated that you are
> running a ZedBoard.What O/S are you running Ubuntu, Yocto, or some
> other distro?Do you have any examples, of how your transfer data to
> the FPGA and back to CPU side?  Also, how do you add to the bin file,
> the bin file that has the (hdmi, Ethernet USB) and other CPU
> devices?  I am currently running on an XESS XulA2 with XC6SLX9 which I
> believe has 9152 logic cells, 666 Kbits of RAM.

The XC6SLX9, as you state, has 9152 logic cells and
1430 slices.  There are 4 LUTs per slice, which is
5720 LUTs (roughly 1.6 LC per LUT?).  The Z-7020
indicates it has 85K logic cells, which is closer
to one of the larger Spartan6 devices (don't recall
if the Zynq programmable fabric is similar to the S6).

         |  LC   | LUTS |
   ------+-------+------+
   LX9   | 9K    | 5.7K |
   LX25  | 25K   | 15K  |
   Z7020 | 85K   | ??   |
   LX100 | 100K  | 63K  |

Costs:
   Xula2-LX9:  $69
   Xula2-LX25: $119
   Zedboard:   $289 (with 7020)
   Parallella: $265 (with 7020, digikey)

> How does this compare
> with what is remaining Zedboard after  (hdmi, Ethernet USB) and other
> CPU devices?

It really depends on what you want to do, the Xula
boards and the misc motherboards are good (IMO) for
experimenting or using the Xula as an FPGA module
in a larger design.  The Zed board, as you point
out, has some higher-end interfaces.  I don't think
they are comparable, they would be for different
purposes (problems).

It might be worthwhile to step back and look at the
project from an architectural view and decide if a
processor is needed or not.  Or if this is for fun
and you want to play with the processor subsystem.
If a processor is required, the Znyq would be a
reasonable option if not the Spartan6 or the newer
7 series would be appropriate.

> Are most people using Xilinx or Altera?

In my opinion it doesn't really matter and you should
strive to develop agnostic designs as much as possible.
When one vendor pisses you off you have options!

Regards,
Chris