Future Devices Technology Morph-IC-II FPGA platform

Future Devices Technology has launched a flexible development platform that speeds the creation of FPGA-based applications and simplifies the integration of hi-speed 480 Mbps USB communication in advanced logic circuit designs.

The Morph-IC-II platform combines an Altera Cyclone-II FPGA with USB 2.0 capabilities that facilitate hi-speed communications with ultra-fast, sub-100 ms FPGA programming/reprogramming.

This makes the platform suitable for applications that require users to reconfigure hardware functionality ‘on-the-fly’ by downloading new software over USB: ‘morphing’ the hardware.

As well as enhancing application flexibility, hardware reconfiguration via USB can also reduce BoM costs as the FPGA need only be sized for the most complex discrete function, rather than all potential functions.

The platform incorporates all the hardware, software and documentation needed for ‘out-of-the-box’ FPGA development. The hardware comprises a compact development module incorporating an Altera EP2C5F256C8N Cyclone-II FPGA and an FTDI FT2232H USB-to-multipurpose UART/FIFO IC.

One channel of the FT2232H is used for FPGA-to-PC communications and supports data transfer speeds of up to 40 MBps. The second channel of the FT2232H is used to configure and reconfigure the FPGA over USB. USB programming eliminates the need for flash configuration memory normally required to configure SRAM-based FPGAs.

The device features up to 80 general purpose I/O lines ensuring optimum flexibility for connecting the FPGA to external circuits and interfaces. USB software interfacing is provided via FTDI’s drivers and sample FPGA reference designs help to speed prototyping and further reduce development times.

The EP2C5F256C8N FPGA offers 4608 embedded FPGA logic elements (LEs) and 26 embedded logic RAM elements for the implementation of LSI and entry-level, very large scale integration (VLSI) designs, with up to 80,000 gates and 119 Kb of RAM.

The FTDI FT2232H IC offers USB-to-UART and USB-to-high-speed FIFO options for general-purpose communications with PC application software. The FT2232H also features a multi-protocol synchronous serial engine - a configurable serial controller that allows designers to implement JTAG, SPI, I2C or other application-specific serial interfaces.