S5-PCIe: Altera Stratix® V GX/GS PCIe Board with up to two VITA 57 FMC I/O Sites and Dual QSFP+
BittWare, the leader in Altera-based FPGA COTS boards, announced the release of the S5-PCIe, a PCIe x8 card based on Altera’s high-performance Stratix® V FPGA. The first Stratix V FPGA-based COTS board on the market, the S5-PCIe, provides two VITA-57 FMC sites for additional I/O and processing, and two optional QSFP+ cages for serial I/O. When combined with BittWare’s value-add products for FPGA – the Anemone FPGA co-processor and the ATLANTiS FrameWork for FPGA integration and development – the S5-PCIe creates a flexible and efficient solution for high-performance signal processing and data acquisition.
“Altera’s Stratix V FPGA is an exciting technology bump that provides more flexibility and bandwidth with less power consumption, while adding amazing DSP capabilities,” stated Jeff Milrod, BittWare President & CEO. “Our S5-PCIe board takes that technology a step further by enabling customers to easily add co-processing and data acquisition that is seamlessly connected to the FPGA, all supported by our FPGA framework and development tools.”
The S5-PCIe board features either an Altera Stratix V GX FPGA or a Stratix V GS FPGA, which offers additional DSP resources, and up to 32 GB of DDR3 SDRAM. By providing a direct path to the high-performance Stratix V FPGA, the S5-PCIe enables customers to go-to-market with a Stratix V FPGA-based solution quickly and efficiently.
S5-PCIe Overview
Designed for high-end applications, the Stratix V FPGA provides a high level of system integration and flexibility for I/O, routing and processing. It is optionally supported by BittWare’s Anemone chip – the low power, floating point, c-programmable FPGA co-processor; and the ATLANTiS FrameWork, which is implemented in the FPGA and greatly simplifies application development and integration. The board provides up to 32 GB of DDR3 SDRAM with error-correcting code (ECC). Providing additional flexibility are up to two VITA 57- FMC sites for enhancing the board’s I/O and processing capabilities. The board also has the option of two front-panel QSFP+ cages for serial I/O.
Stratix V GX and Stratix V GS FPGAs are optimized for high-performance, high-bandwidth applications with integrated 14.1 Gbps transceivers supporting backplanes and optical modules. The devices support 1.6 Tbps of serial switching capability, 2.5 TMACS of signal-processing performance, and 6 x72 DDR3 memory interfaces at 1,066 MHz. The Stratix V also provides PCI Express Gen3 x8 via a hard IP block and supports configuration by PCI Express using the existing PCI Express link in your application. The FPGA implements BittWare’s ATLANTiS FrameWork and provides seamless routing of all on-board data, I/O, and memory.
The S5PE features up to two FMC (FPGA Mezzanine Card) sites, which provide high-performance SerDes and LVDS, along with clocks, I2C, JTAG, and reset connected to the Stratix V FPGA. The sites are based on the VITA 57 mezzanine standard for FPGA I/O, enabling designers to customize the S5PE to their individual needs with optional FMC I/O boards.
In addition to the FMC I/O, the S5PE provides a variety of interfaces for high-speed serial I/O as well as debug support. Two QSFP+ cages are optionally available on the front panel (in place of the front panel FMC interface), providing support for virtually any serial communication standard, including: Fibre Channel, 40 GigE, 10 GigE, SONET, CPRI, OBSAI, Serial RapidIO, and SerialLite. The eight QSFP+ SerDes channels are connected directly to the Stratix V FPGA.
The x8 PCIe interface provides 8 SerDes lanes to the Stratix V FPGA. USB 2.0, RS-232, and JTAG interfaces are available for debug and programming support.
Complete Development Support
The S5-PCIe is supported by the BittWorks II Toolkit, a collection of libraries and applications for BittWare’s signal processing boards featuring both Stratix IV and V FPGAs. Designed to make developing and debugging the applications for BittWare’s boards easy and efficient, the Toolkit provides the glue between the host application and the hardware. The Toolkit supports 32-bit, and 64-bit Windows and Linux platforms. Complementing the BittWorks Tool Suite is Altera’s Quartus® II software for application/code development.
