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If you had a Altera Cyclone IV Dev Kit, what would you build?

awinning

Hi,

 

As mentioned in the RoadTest for the DK-STRT-4CGX15N-0B Dev kit, we would like you to tell us what you would build if you had the opportunity. When the RoadTest closes I will choose a short list and create a poll for you to vote in. Winners of the poll will receive the kits,

 

Good Luck,

Ally

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  • Hi,

    Working for the first time with an Altera FPGA, the first thing to be done is blinking a led.

    After becoming familiar with it, I would try to develop the following projects:
    1. Network Stress Tester - a high speed packet generator designed to test networking equipments under heavy load (eg. many small packets).
    2. A high performance hardware firewall - designed as a PCI-e ethernet controller with configurable packet filters that take advantage of the FPGA to offload the host PC. This could be used to protect servers or networks against denial of service attacks (for example very many small packets could produce heavy load for a software router, but a FPGA could filter them without much effort).

    I am a student in fourth year at Applied Electronics. I have worked with Xilinx FPGAs before but I never worked with one from Altera.
    Having some networking experience, mostly software, I saw many times a server overwhelmed by heavy network load. That's why I thought about a hardware networking project.
    I don't know many things about low-level networking and PCI-e, receiving some advice from an Altera application engineer would be great.


    Bogdan-Florin Florea
  • in reply to Former Member

    Hi Alistair,

    Is there any update to the Road Test?....

     

    Thanks,

    Lakshmi

  • in reply to blakme

    Hi Lakshmi,

     

    Thanks for the reminder, I am actually wondering how to proceed.

     

    I have had a talk with Altera, and they think it is a really specialized kit as some of the guys on the thread mentioned. So I am thinking I should re-open the test for a week or so with no limitations and draw as normal, rather than hold a vote as I had planned. But then I don't like changing the rules halfway through anything.

     

    What do you think?

  • in reply to awinning

    Having read the documentation (again) I think the Cyclone IV Transceiver dev kit is already a complete product - and the software which is bundled with it is suitable for evaluating the main Cyclone chip on board.

     

    I think it'd be better described as an eval kit - although for advanced users with PCI Express experience it is also a dev kit.

     

    Having said all that, I do think it's an interesting kit. It has the FPGA and a CPLD and USB Blaster all on board.

     

    So If I had an Altera Cyclone IV Dev Kit, here is what I'd do with it:

     

    I'd use the kit to learn more about FPGA devices and CPLD devices; I'd look at some of the projects which I've built over the past few years and see how easily any of them could be boiled down to a single FPGA rather than the dozens of components normally used; I'd look at their suitability for replacing glue logic in digital circuits, and even if they have any mixed signal capabilities.

     

    For the E-14 community, I would 'blog' from time to time on the learning process, the toolset and the results. I'd blog about the difference bewteen conventional microcontollers + glue and FPGAs; and I'd blog about the pros and cons of each. Maybe i'd even look at the 'FP' part of FPGA and discuss the theory versus the practicality of using one.

     

    So that's my proposal. :-)

  • in reply to KennyMillar

    I would vouch for at least one review like Kenny described.

     

    That would provide other users valuable info on how FPGAs can be used and where they can provide advantage.

     

    For that existing projects are required to have a good comparison available.

     

     

     

     

     

    Elias

  • in reply to Former Member

    Even I would like to vouch for one review like Kenny described.

     

    I guess it would be reasonable to give some time for others to come up with proposals. But personally i dont prefer the rules changing in the midway

     

    Thanks,

    Lakshmi

  • in reply to blakme

    Ive created the poll on the RoadTest homepage. Time to get voting, good luck to all. The vote should last a week from this message. You have to be logged in to vote or you will just see the results so far.

  • in reply to awinning

    Ouch! It seems I'm out of the poll.

    Good luck to all the participants!

    I'm very interested in seeing your projects reviews.

  • in reply to Former Member

    Inigo,

     

    I've gone back through the thread and can't see your suggestion.

     

    The only reason I was going to cut down on entries was if the poll was restricted. It wasn't so a selected everyone...I thought

     

    Let me know what it was and I will add it


    Ally

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