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Beginning FPGA Programming - Partie7

The BeMicro MAX 10 board features include: - An 80-pin edge connector interface that can be used for input and output. - On-board peripherals like 8MB SDRAM, accelerometer, DAC, temperature sensor, resistors, LEDs, buttons. - An Altera USB Programmer for programming and debugging the MAX 10 FPGA. - Power is provided through the computer's USB port. - Expansion connectivity includes PMOD headers, prototyping headers, and analog/digital I/O pins.

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42 views5 pages

Beginning FPGA Programming - Partie7

The BeMicro MAX 10 board features include: - An 80-pin edge connector interface that can be used for input and output. - On-board peripherals like 8MB SDRAM, accelerometer, DAC, temperature sensor, resistors, LEDs, buttons. - An Altera USB Programmer for programming and debugging the MAX 10 FPGA. - Power is provided through the computer's USB port. - Expansion connectivity includes PMOD headers, prototyping headers, and analog/digital I/O pins.

Uploaded by

ali alilou
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chapter 2 ■ Our Weapon of Choice

2.2.2 The Emissaries: BeMicro MAX 10 Board Features


The BeMicro MAX 10 board has a lot of features (emissaries) on the board. The board comes with an 80-pin
edge connector interface. This interface can be used as input and/or output. The board includes a variety of
peripherals such as 8MB SDRAM (synchronous dynamic random access memory), accelerometer, digital-to-
analog converter (DAC), temperature sensor, thermal resistor, photo resistor, LEDs (light-emitting diodes),
pushbuttons, and several different options for expansion connectivity. The board comes with an Altera USB
Programmer (Altera calls it the USB-Blaster). The programmer is used not only for programming the MAX
10 FPGA but also for debugging the FPGA. Figure 2-3 shows all of the function blocks on the board. The way
to power this development board is easy. All you need is your computer's USB port, as it only needs a very
small amount of juice. Most of these features will be used in Part III and Part IV.

Figure 2-3.  BeMicro MAX 10 Block diagram

The summary of the features is


• Embedded USB-Blaster for use with the Altera Programmer
• Clocking circuitry: 50 MHz oscillator
• External peripherals
• 8MB SDRAM (4Mb x 16) (ISSI IS42S16400)
• Accelerometer, 3-Axis, SPI interface (Analog Devices ADXL362)
• DAC, 12-bit, SPI interface (Analog Devices AD5681)
• Temperature sensor, I2C interface (Analog Devices ADT7420)

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Chapter 2 ■ Our Weapon of Choice

• Thermal resistor
• Photo resistor

• General user input or output


• 8 user LEDs
• 2 user Pushbuttons

• Expansion connectivity

• Two 6-pin PMOD expansion headers


• Two 40-pin prototyping headers which provide access to 64 digital I/O
• One 6-pin analog input header
• One 80-pin BeMicro card edge connector

■■History The first SoC integrated circuit (IC) was a digital watch. It integrated a timekeeping circuit and LCD
driver transistors on to a single Intel 5810 CMOS chip in 1974. Source: http://www.computerhistory.org/
semiconductor/timeline/1974-digital-watch-is-first-system-on-chip-integrated-circuit-52.html.

It’s excellent for getting started and learning the basics, but at the same time it’s ready to be the core
of something big. We understand that you may have very good reasons to use another development board.
Although the projects in this book are tailored for the BeMicro MAX 10, most of the example designs we use
are standard and are applicable to any FPGA. However, if you have the BeMicro MAX 10, you will benefit of
being able to follow explicit step-by-step instructions and won’t have to worry about converting or adapting
those instructions, which causes problems all by themselves.
We do take advantage of the on-board peripherals including the LEDs and ADC, and we use the
MAX 10’s block RAM for storing data in some projects. If your development board has different on-board
peripherals, you can either connect the same device(s) externally or replace the relevant parts of the code
with equivalents for the on-board peripherals you have. It’s a bit harder to adapt to different internal FPGA
features, so it’s best to choose a development board based on an FPGA from the MAX 10 family if you want to
follow along when we’re using the block RAM.

■■Tips The most updated information about BeMicro MAX 10 is in this Altera Wiki web site:
http://www.alterawiki.com/wiki/BeMicro_Max_10.

2.3 Other Tools
I know the BeMicro MAX 10 module is self-contained, and you can start programming it with no other
components, but limiting yourself to eight LEDs as outputs and four buttons as an input is rather restrictive.
It’s far more fun to hook up your FPGA to the real world. We won’t be doing any hard-core electrical
engineering—it’s all going to be pretty basic stuff—and I don’t expect you’ll want to set up a workshop, but
you will need a few essential tools to get the job done. You may even already have some of them already.

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Chapter 2 ■ Our Weapon of Choice

2.3.1 The Place to Connect Everything: The Breadboard


The most important item of all is the solderless electronics breadboard (Figure 2-4). Why is it called a
breadboard? You definitely don’t want to get bread near it—crumbs in those holes would be very bad.
The name is a historical artefact: back when components were bigger, you’d build experimental circuits
on a wooden breadboard, drilling holes in it and screwing down wires to make connections. The modern
breadboard is a bit more civilized than that, but it still serves the same purpose: letting you build and
modify a circuit with minimal effort. Don't forget to get jumper wires for the breadboard to connect things.

Figure 2-4.  My breadboard: I bought this board when I took my first electronic class.

■■Tips Use various colored solid-core jumper wire. You can color-code each connection according to its
purpose and it is easier to insert in the breadboard's holes.

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Chapter 2 ■ Our Weapon of Choice

2.3.2 Making the Invisible Visible: The Multi-meter


A proper multi-meter for regular use around the home or electronic work can be had for less than $20. More
expensive meters do not necessarily have more features. They give greater accuracy for professional work,
and they are more rugged in their construction and durability. We only need the multi-meter to measure
DC voltage, DC current, and resistance in this book's project. Any cheap multi-meter (Figure 2-5) will be
accurate enough for all the projects in this book, so don’t feel forced to pay more for something that comes
with a calibration certificate too.

Figure 2-5.  My cheap multi-meter

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Chapter 2 ■ Our Weapon of Choice

2.4 Wrap-up
This chapter briefly presented the features of the BeMicro MAX 10 board—one of the common development
boards—and the MAX 10 FPGA. We provided links to some of the key online documentation and to the wiki
forum. I recommend you download the MAX 10 FPGA user guide collection from the Altera MAX 10 support
page (www.altera.com/products/fpga/max-series/max-10/support.html). Please don't read through
the whole user guide, as it has more than 500 pages. It is for reference only. The preparation for hardware is
done; next comes software!

“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”
—Alan Curtis Kay

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