Quote:
Originally Posted by Eldarion
Actually, that is the same misconception that prevented me from working with these powerful little buggers for quite a while. 
The software (compiler, IDE, etc.) is completely free (download the Xilinx WebPack). The development board that I am using for my vision system is "only" $150, and comes with a programming cable and power supply.
EDIT: If you don't need as many gates as I did (you probably won't) you can get the same kit for $99. That's less than the cost of a microcontroller development kit and compiler! 
So , on the contrary, they *can* be used for fun projects... :evil laugh: |
Yes - I own both the Spartan 3 and Spartan 3E dev boards (although my Spartan 3 is currently non-functional, thanks to me accidentally putting 12V at an IO). The 3E would be a very capable starting point as it can easily hold a MicroBlaze and plenty of other logic, and has the SPI A/D etc. I had considered developing an interface to one of these for our robot this year, but there simply wasn't a need for it with autonomous being so worthless. The Virtex 2 Pro and Virtex 4 boards with the built in PowerPC's are quite out of our reach as far as price, however.
As far as the cost of software - the synthesis tools (ISE webpack) and simple simulation tools (the free ModelSim) are free. However, the EDK - which lets you setup the microprocessor inside the FPGA (includes the logic for the MicroBlaze and the stuff to setup the PowerPC) is expensive ($1000). I think that would be a necessary part of any FPGA system for a robot controller, as writing your autonomous in Verilog or VHDL would just be a pain, not to mention the synthesis time, whereas 64+ megs of DDR memory and plenty of flash memory with an Eclipse SDK and gcc and g++ would be a welcomed change. I've had 20+ min synthesis times on a Virtex 2 Pro project I was working on, which I simply don't think will work for FIRST applications.