October 2008

PCI Express Links in Under 30 Minutes!

New low-cost LatticeECP2M Development Kit enables rapid PCI Express system design - 30 minutes to demo, 2 hours to design validation.

FPGAs are an ideal solution for small-to-medium volume PCI Express-based applications, especially as a replacement for expensive ASICs or limited functionality ASSPs. FPGAs solve many issues for PCI Express designers – they help avoid prohibitive ASIC NRE costs, lead times, and long learning curves. By using FPGAs, designers can change/add features for new specifications as necessary to "future-proof" their designs against obsolescence. Designers can also speed time-to-market by combining a flexible, optimized PCI Express IP core from Lattice with their value-added intellectual property in the FPGA fabric for a single-chip solution.

Although this seems relatively straightforward, accomplishing these tasks for FPGA-based PCI Express system design has been somewhat cumbersome. There are tools and boards to integrate, design flows to learn, and standards to review. As a consequence, PCI Express designers have been yearning for fast, low-cost methods to bring-up demos and get started on system development. They desire to do this without getting buried in the complexities of PCI Express specifications, but also at a cost that is reasonable and doesn’t require a big time sink or steep learning curve.

The LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit

In order to address these needs, Lattice has released the new LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit. Unlike competitive kits, the LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit offers several key features for quick, low-cost PCI Express system design:

• An all-inclusive package that is optimized for creating a design with the low-cost LatticeECP2M FPGA family
• A variety of demo executables that show how to address different design performance requirements
• A 60-day software tools license and included x1/x4 endpoint IP core that permits users to get up and running right away
• A highly-optimized, low-cost PCI Express evaluation board that enables both x1 and x4 endpoint evaluation and design  – all at a list price of just $895 

All components of the LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit have been developed to work together to enable fast system evaluation and design. With the help of easy step-by-step instructions, designers can expect to get a demo running in as little as 30 minutes, and a design validated in less than two hours!

LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit

The LatticeECP2M PCI Express x1/x4 Evaluation Board

The kit includes the new low-cost LatticeECP2M PCI Express x1, x4 Evaluation Board. This board has been optimized with several features designed to make the evaluation process more productive, including support of both x1 and x4 edge card fingers so the board can be plugged into either a x1 or x4 connector on a PC motherboard. It also includes a set of LEDs for each link, visible from outside the PC chassis, so that a user can determine if a link is active. There are several demos that include a basic demo for control plane applications, a throughput demo for high-bandwidth applications, and two demos relevant to applications requiring Scatter-Gather DMA capability – a color bar demo and an image transfer demo (which also makes use of the Lattice Scatter-Gather DMA IP core). All of the demos make use of the just-released LatticeECP2M PCI Express x1/x4 Endpoint IP core revision 3.3.

Software Support

Both Windows and Linux platforms are supported by the LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit. Lattice ispLEVER design software, demo executables, and demo source files (which can be used to rebuild and validate the demos) also support both platforms. A complete set of documentation is also included, which easily guides users through installing the evaluation board, demo software, drivers, and design tools.

To Learn More

The LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit is aimed at helping PCI Express novices to rapidly evaluate and develop PCI Express solutions. With this kit, there is no need for users to be intimately familiar with PCI Express specifications to drive towards functioning hardware. For users who are more familiar with PCI Express specifications, the path toward running demos and hardware validation is even further accelerated. 

Visit the Lattice website for further information about the new LatticeECP2M PCI Express Development Kit.