Embedded protoyping boards from Aldec feature Microchip’s PolarFire SoCs
Embedded prototyping boards which extend Aldec’s TySOM family, are the first in a planned series to feature a Microchip PolarFire SoC FPGA MPFS250T-FCG1152 and to have dual FMC connectivity.
The TySOM-M-MPFS250 uses the PolarFire SoC FPGA which has low power consumption, robust thermal efficiency and defence-grade security, says Aldec, making it suitable for use in smart, connected systems. It is also claimed to be the first SoC FPGA to provide a coherent RISC-V CPU cluster and a deterministic L2 memory subsystem, ensuring that it is capable of running Linux and real-time applications.
The RISC-V CPU micro-architecture implementation in the PolarFire SoC MPFS250T-FCG1152 is a five-stage, single issue in-order pipeline. The five cores are one SiFive E51 Monitor core (RV64IMAC) and four SiFive U54 application cores (RV64GC). Four of the five cores, four can be used for the Linux OS. The SoC FPGA also includes 254k of FPGA logic elements, LSRAM, uPROM and uRAM.
The TySOM-M-MPFS250 has 16Gbit FPGA DDR4 memory x32, 16Gbit MSS DDR4 x36 memory, with error code correction (ECC), eMMC, SPI flash memory, 64kbit EEPROM and a microSD card socket. In addition to the dual FMC connectivity, there are two Ethernet 10/100/1000, one USB 2.0, a USB to UART bridge, a PCIe x4 Gen2 root, CAN and HDMI Out interfaces provided for external communications.
Claimed to be the lowest power, multi-core SoC FPGAs available on the market, the PolarFire SoC FPGAs enable triple-layer security that protects the hardware, design and data. Each processor core also has physical memory protection, to enforce access restrictions depending on the machine’s privilege state, says Microchip.
The initial member of the TySOM-M board family provide engineers with a highly versatile platform for developing applications that will cost less than if they were to target Arm cores, says Aldec. “Also, the board’s ability to connect to two FMC daughter cards means it can be used in virtually any industry sector without having to develop custom hardware. This really is a powerful plug-and-play solution,” said Zibi Zalewski, general manager of Aldec’s hardware division.
The debut board in Aldec’s new TySOM-M series can accommodate larger PolarFire SoC FPGAs, as and when they become available, and that the boards for prototyping designs targeting those devices would be available shortly afterwards. This is all part of Aldec’s commitment to RISC-V.
The TySOM family of embedded system prototyping boards can have one of three FPGAs, Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+, a Xilinx Xilinx Zynq-7000 or a Microchip PolarFire SoC. The boards are compatible, through the industry standard FMC interface, with Aldec’s daughter cards for the rapid development of applications that include automotive (and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) in particular), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), embedded vision, embedded-HPC (including edge-processing), IoT, IIoT and industrial automation.
Established in 1984, Aldec is an industry leader in electronic design verification and offers a patented technology suite including RTL design, RTL simulators, hardware-assisted verification, SoC and ASIC prototyping, design rule checking, CDC verification, IP cores, high performance computing platforms, embedded development systems, requirements lifecycle management, DO-254 functional verification and military/aerospace solutions.
