3rd Party/Other Boards and Kits

[sraza]

Dear all,

I have got the 4DSP 's development kit including FM680 XMC, this includes Virtex6 and Virtex5 fpgas.

I want to inquire several questions regaring.

1) My previous design was based on dual port RAM, but now I have to deal with DDR3, what do you guys suggest should I do.

2) How to control the PCIe communication in the KIT...These two are the main hurdles... please do response keeping the development kit in place, there is a software as well, STELLAR IP but since they have not provided hte licesnce for the s/w so it will take 2 days for 4dsp team to provide the license only then can I start fully...

I am relatively new to these things, although I have done great deal of things untill simulation but this is first time of my experience to deal pracitically with a development board, earlier I had worked on small projects over ML605 kit.

It would be really help ful from the community if they help me in understanding and doing things right...

I am a DIY-type-guy , so I will only bother at areas which I find difficult to cope up with or  time consuming since I have only 15 days left in submitting final project and need assistance.

Please do response.

Best Regards,

Shan

[joelby]

15 days isn't a lot of time to come to grips with the MIG controller for DDR memory and with PCIe. I would be very hesitant to attempt such a big change with so little time unless you are very confident in your abilities and/or you can't convince your professor that it's a bad idea and you want to prove them wrong.

If the BRAM resources in the Virtex chip you're using aren't sufficient for storing your data (how much memory do you require?), DDR3 will potentially work just fine as long as you bear in mind the memory bandwidth and how that compares to the speed at which you want to move data in and out of it. However dealing with DDR is a fair bit more complicated than an SRAM, though the details are abstracted if you're using MicroBlaze rather than HDL.

I think Xilinx provide some PCIe reference designs that you can adapt, but you haven't said exactly what you're trying to do with it. Bear in mind that in addition to designing a controller, you might need to write your own PCIe device driver for Windows or Linux (depending on your host PC) and this will be another thing you need to learn how to do very quickly. If 4DSP provide a working example for their board that does most of what you want to do, this may help you get up to speed faster (I have no personal experience with their products at all).