If you are looking for the best Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), what are some of the parameters you use to make the analysis? If we are to suggest, one of the most important features is the circuit board’s functionalities.
In addition to choosing an FPGA that offers the best performance, you also want to make sure that the board fits into your purpose or target applications.
Perhaps, one of the most important features to look for is the affordability of the FPGA. It may be hard to get all these three (3) functional elements in one circuit board, but with the Cyclone V, you can be sure of getting those in one box.
What Does Cyclone V Mean?
It is a category of FPGAs from the stables of Intel. The company manufactured the Cyclone V to be a circuit board interfacing between affordability and excellent performance. It is a variant of the high-performance circuit boards from Intel, only that this time, it features the improved costs of the other boards.
Cyclone V is a Combination of Cost-Optimization and Varied Performances
Cyclone V
You can be sure of getting the best performance from this set of FPGAs. Without taking just our word from it, here is the link to the manufacturer’s publication to learn more about the variations.
The most outstanding feature is that the Cyclone V FPGAs come with different variants and each of those have been optimized to fit into different use cases. For example, there is the Cyclone V SX SoC FPGA that supports up to 3.125 Gbps transceivers and an ARM-based HPS.
The following are some of the additional variants:
- Cyclone V E FPGA that comes with only a logic.
- Cyclone V ST FPGA that comes with an ARM-based HPS and up to 6.144 Gbps transceivers.
- Cyclone V GT FPGA that comes with 6.144 Gbps transceivers.
- Cyclone V SE SoC FPGA with an ARM-based Hard Processor System (HPS) and a logic.
Ideal Applications
Being an ecosystem of low-cost FPGAs, one may expect that the Cyclone V would be used with similar applications. The reversal is the case as the circuit boards are oriented for the high-volume and cost-sensitive applications.
These applications or target devices cut across the automotive, broadcast, industrial and consumer electronics. They also extend to wireless, military, wireline and a wide range of small form-factor applications.
Cyclone V Advantages
Given the wide range of applications, we can expect the advantages of these FPGAs to also be higher. Below are some of the numerous benefits associated with using the Cyclone V for FPGA designs.
1. Readily-Available Functions
One of the core attributes of the Cyclone V is that the functions are ready-to-use. They are more of readily-available functions that don’t need much configurations before deploying them to good use.
2. Integrated Architecture
The architecture used on the Cyclone V is one of the reasons why it is described as an “FPGA series for low-cost applications.”
One of the reasons why FPGA consumers spend a lot of money on the circuit board is because of the multiple components used.
But when you have an in-house perspective to these components, you can be certain to save some money. That is what the Cyclone V offers – an architecture that “integrates many hard IP blocks.” With that in place, you can be sure of saving some money on components.
Cyclone V’s integrated architecture design is based on the Intel System-on-Chip (SoC) FPGA. The following are some of the architecture’s attributes:
3. Unmatched FPGA Control
Looking for a way to be in full control of the design or configurable process for the FPGA? you need an architecture that makes that work and thankfully, the Intel SoC FPGA does.
The architecture enables system-level debug with the Intel FPGA-adaptive debugging. This debugging process greatly contributes to the Cyclone V’s capability to offer both full control and unmatched visibility when working on the FPGA.
4. Excellent Memory Configuration
The FPGA’s memory places an important role in the overall function, because it handles the data. In Cyclone V’s case, it uses the Intel SoC FPGA architecture to protect the DRAM memory shared by the FPGA and the processor.
It also goes further to enhance the memory protection with the integrated memory protection unit.
On the other hand, the Intel SoC FPGA uses the integrated ECC to maintain data reliability and integrity.
One other attribute of the architecture is the preservation of the flexibility of the FPGA configuration sequence and that of the processor boot.
5. Cyclone V Meets the Increasing Bandwidth Requirements
At the core of how this FPGA series functions is the support for higher bandwidths. This is in line with the ever-increasing bandwidth requirements.
Worthy of mentioning here is that the Cyclone V uses a high-bandwidth interconnect to create high-throughput data paths between the FPGA fabric and the Hard Processor System (HPS).
This interconnection is an improvement to the two-chip solutions that don’t provide excellent connections of the aforementioned parts.
Using the high-bandwidth interconnect, Cyclone V achieves removes the external Input and Output (I/O) paths between the FPGA fabric and the processor. That paves the way for the FPGA to save a great deal of power.
The high-bandwidth interconnection also provides the FPGA with integrated data coherency and over 100 Gigabytes Per Second (Gbps) of peak bandwidth.
The ARM-Based HPS
Cyclone V also supports a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore Processor, which provides the FPGA fabric with numerous functional elements. Below are some of the functions it supports:
- Hardened Multiport Memory Controller: this memory controller gets shared by the FPGA logic and the processor. It also supports the LPDDR2, DDR2 and DDR3 devices with the integrated Error Correction Code (ECC). It is also through this interface that Cyclone V offers support for the safety-critical and high-reliability applications.
- Hardened Embedded Peripherals: these peripherals pave the way for more FPGA resources to be used for power reduction and application-specific logic. It actualizes this via the non-support for the implementation of the functions in programmable logic.
Final Words
Cyclone V is one of the best Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) series you can use to deliver a combination of power-optimization, excellent performance, flexible architecture and high-bandwidth interconnections in the low-power and cost-sensitive applications.
