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Blog Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects
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  • Author Author: rscasny
  • Date Created: 5 Aug 2019 9:03 PM Date Created
  • Views 4601 views
  • Likes 16 likes
  • Comments 25 comments
  • scasny
  • xilinx
  • xilinx spartan 6
  • fpga
  • digilent
  • spartan-6
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Who is Interested in Experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA? If You Are, I have 2 Boards to Giveaway for Projects

rscasny
rscasny
5 Aug 2019

I had a lot of interest in my giveaway for the Digilent CMOD S7 board, so I am offering another giveaway for 2 members who are interested in experimenting with a Spartan-6 FPGA. Let me tell you about the board first. image

 

It's called the Cmod S6 -- a Breadboardable Spartan-6 FPGA Module.

 

It's small, featuring a 48-pin DIP form factor board built around a Xilinx Spartan 6 LX4 FPGA.

 

The board also includes a programming ROM, clock source, USB programming and data transfer circuit, power supplies, and basic I/O devices. There are 46 FPGA I/O signals that are routed to 100-mil-spaced through-hole pins, making the Cmod S6 well suited for use with solderless breadboards. At just .7” by 2.6” inches, it can also be loaded in a standard socket and used in embedded systems.

 

Key features include:

 

Spartan 6 XC6SLX4-2CPG196 FPGA Features include:

  • 600 slices (each with 4 LUTs and eight flip-flops);
  • 8 DSP slices;
  • 216Kbits of block RAM;
  • 2 CMTs (4 DCMs and 2 PLLs).

 

Board features include:

 

16Mbyte Spansion Quad SPI Flash for storing FPGA configurations and/or user data;

  • 46 FPGA GPIO signals brought to DIP pins;
  • Two on-board clock sources;
  • 4 user LEDs and 2 user buttons;
  • On-board Adept USB2 port for configuration, test and communications interfaces.

 

Here's the datasheet:

 

https://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1841742.pdf?_ga=2.84073758.603595138.1565037142-1061579168.1558457094

 

 

What Do You Need to Do To Get These Boards?

 

I'm running these as board project giveaways instead of RoadTests to give members interested in experimenting with the Spartan-6 but may not feel they have the background to compete in a full roadtest. So like the last giveaway if you are would-be roadtester who would like to build up his/her portfolio of things you have done on the community or you want to do something to learn about the Spartan-6 FPGA and get some time to improve your skills with the associated design tool, this could very well be for you. (A side note: I may very well decide to roadtest this in the future. But for now, I want to do a giveaway project.)

 

So, tell me what you want to achieve with this little board? What's your goal in learning? What would you like to experiment with? Or what kind of project do you think you would build. I'll choose the 2 most interesting ideas and send you the board.

 

Randall Scasny

RaodTest Program Manager

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Top Comments

  • rscasny
    rscasny over 6 years ago in reply to Fred27 +5
    Yes, this board uses a different tool. Here's some places to start: ISE Design Suite https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suite.html ISE WebPACK Design Software https://www.xilinx.com…
  • rachaelp
    rachaelp over 6 years ago +5
    Hi Randall I'm not going to put my hat in the ring to get a freebie here as I think it's intended for newbies getting into FPGA design (and I do this in my job) and I don't have the time to take on another…
  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 6 years ago in reply to rscasny +4
    The ISE toolset is best run on a windows version lower than 10. For windows 10 users, Xilinx provides a virtual machine image with Xilinx toolset installed. You start that VM to work with ISE then.
Parents
  • zamaliphe
    zamaliphe over 6 years ago

    I have allredy get a board last week not sure if can apply here but I just saw this post image

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  • Fred27
    Fred27 over 6 years ago in reply to zamaliphe

    Considering Spartan 7 uses Vivado and Spartan 6 requires the older ISE Design Suite 14.7, I'd recommend you stick to the 7 series. They're both capable IDEs but different and both huge multi-GB downloads.

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  • Fred27
    Fred27 over 6 years ago in reply to zamaliphe

    Considering Spartan 7 uses Vivado and Spartan 6 requires the older ISE Design Suite 14.7, I'd recommend you stick to the 7 series. They're both capable IDEs but different and both huge multi-GB downloads.

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  • rscasny
    rscasny over 6 years ago in reply to Fred27

    Yes, this board uses a different tool.

     

    Here's some places to start:

     

     

     

    ISE Design Suite

    https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suite.html

     

     

    ISE WebPACK Design Software

    https://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/ise-design-suite/ise-webpack.html

     

     

    ISE Configuration and Programming Overview

    https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/sw_manuals/xilinx11/ise_c_configuration_overview.htm

     

     

    Program FPGA using XilinxRegistered iMPACTTm

    https://learn.digilentinc.com/Documents/367

     

     

    Digilent Plugin for Xilinx Tools (DOWNLOAD ONLY)

    https://store.digilentinc.com/digilent-plugin-for-xilinx-tools-download-only/

     

     

    Xilinx iMPACT Examples

    http://www.ni.com/tutorial/8671/en/

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  • Jan Cumps
    Jan Cumps over 6 years ago in reply to rscasny

    The ISE toolset is best run on a windows version lower than 10.

    For windows 10 users, Xilinx provides a virtual machine image with Xilinx toolset installed.

    You start that VM to work with ISE then.

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