BittWare D4AM | Altera Stratix IV GX FPGA | Stratix IV E FPGA | 10GigE | VITA 57 FMC | AdvancedMC | Serial I/O-based Applications
BittWare’s D4-AMC (D4AM) features the I/O processing power of two Altera Stratix IV FPGAs. The D4AM is a mid- or full-size, single wide AdvancedMC that can be attached to AdvancedTCA carriers or other cards equipped with AMC bays, and used in MicroTCA systems. An Altera Stratix IV GX FPGA paired with a Stratix IV E make the D4AM an extremely high-density, flexible board. The FPGAs are connected by two full-duplex 2 GByte/sec lanes of parallel I/O for data sharing. Providing enhanced flexibility is a VITA 57-compliant FMC site, which connects directly to the Stratix IV E FPGA for LVDS and to the Stratix IV GX for SerDes. The board also provides an IPMI system management interface and a configurable 18-port AMC SerDes interface supporting a variety of protocols. On-board memory includes up to 1 GByte of DDR3 and 128 MBytes of Flash, and Ethernet is available via the AMC front and rear panels.
The Altera Stratix IV GX was specifically designed for serial I/O-based applications requiring high-density, reconfigurable logic. The Stratix IV GX provides 27 full-duplex, multi-gigabit transceivers, 24 of which are high-performance supporting PCI Express (Rev 1.0/2.0), 10GigE, GigE, Serial RapidIO (Rev 1.0/2.0), and SerialLite II standards. It contains up to 530k equivalent LEs, over 20 Mbits of embedded memory, and 1,024 embedded 18×18 multipliers.
The Altera Stratix IV E (Enhanced) is a high-density FPGA that provides up to 813,050 logic elements, over 33 Mbits of embedded memory, and 1,288 18×18 bit multipliers. The Stratix IV E is connected to the Stratix IV GX by a 184-bit, 250 MHz user I/O interface.
Features
Dual FPGAs: Altera Stratix IV E and Stratix IV GX
BittWare’s FINe™ III Host/Control Bridge provides control plane processing and interface
AMC I/O: 18 ports SerDes, 1 port GigE
Additional I/O: 10/100 Ethernet, 16 GPIO, RS-232, and JTAG
VITA 57 FMC site for I/O and processing expansion
Fat Pipes, Common Options, and I/O Interfaces
The Stratix IV GX FPGA interfaces to 3 ports (1, 2, & 3) in the AMC common options region, and 16 ports in the AMC fat pipes region (4 – 15, 17 – 20). These 19 ports provide a network data and control switch fabric interface on the AMC connector, with 12 supporting up to 6.25 GHz, 3 supporting up to 3.125 GHz, and the remaining 4 providing rear-panel GPIO. All AMC clocks are also connected to the Stratix IV GX. The front panel provides an additional 4 SerDes via an Infiniband-type connector, along with 10/100 Ethernet, 2 RS-232 ports, and a JTAG port for debug support.
BittWare’s FINe III Host/Control Bridge implements a complete control plane interface for the S4AM, facilitating separate control and data planes, and greatly simplifying the development of data plane I/O and processing. Extensive software support is provided via BittWare’s BittWorks Toolkit, which is tightly integrated with the FINe.
The FINe III provides GigE via the common options region, along with 10/100 Ethernet and an RS232 monitor port on the AMC front panel, and is connected to the FPGA via a local control bus.
VITA 57 FMC Site for Processing and IO Expansion
The S4AM features an FMC (FPGA Mezzanine Card) site, which provides 8 high-performance SerDes and 80 LVDS, along with clocks, I2C, JTAG, and reset connected to the Stratix IV. The site is based on the VITA 57 mezzanine standard for FPGA I/O, enabling designers to customize the S4AM to their individual needs with optional FMC I/O boards. A variety of I/O or processor FMCs are available integrated with the S4AM.
Development Tools
BittWare offers complete software support for the S43X with its BittWorks II software tools. The BittWorks II Toolkit is a collection of libraries and applications for BittWare’s Stratix IV and V FPGA-based boards. 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.
Hardware accelerator diagram: BittWare D4AM with VITA 57 FMC site for Processing and I/O Expansion.
D4AM is a single width AMC board with dual FPGAs: Altera Stratix IV E and Stratix IV GX.FINe III architecture overview: D4AM is equipped with FINe III Host/Control Bridge.BwMonitor is a part of the BittWorks II Toolkit: provides live board power and temperature display of BittWare hardware.
