Adafruit DE0-Nano FPGA Development Kit Features Altera Cyclone IV

Adafruit makes it easy to quickly start a project or test out a concept with the DE0-Nano FPGA development kit.

This kit comes with the evaluation board featuring the Altera Cyclone IV FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and two CDs with all the necessary software to compile the configuration code and download to the board.

Configuration (i.e.., the process of programming the FPGA with a design, similar to boot-code for a processor / controller), as well as power, are accomplished via a mini USB port on the board.

Please note that the software and development tools are provide to run on computers with either Windows or Linux, but no Mac support at this time.

Related Article – A Primer On Programmable Logic For FPGA, CPLD and SOC

The module itself contains a nice collection of accessories:

• Altera Cyclone IV FPGA (EP4CE22F17C6N)
• 22,320 Logic elements (LEs)
• 594 Embedded memory (Kbits)
• 66 Embedded 18 x 18 multipliers
• 4 General-purpose PLLs
• 153 Maximum FPGA I/O pins
• 50 MHz clock oscillator
• 8-channel 12-bit Analog/Digital converter (NS ADC128S022)
• 32 MB SDRAM
• On-board USB blaster programming interface
• USB mini-AB port
• 2Kb I2C EEPROM
• 4 DIP switches
• 8 Green LEDs
• ADXL345 3-axis Accelerometer
• Two 40-pin IDC-compatible headers provides 72 general purpose I/O pins
• One 26-pin header provides 16 digital I/O pins and 8 analog input pins to connect to analog sensors

There’s no paper book included, but there is a very detailed Altera FPGA training curriculum that a hobbyist or student could use as part of a self-taught FPGA learning. There are also numerous tutorials on the Altera website.

In the video below, Allen Houng (Strategic Marketing Manager for terasIC Technologies) explains the board functionality and how to quickly get started on a project.

The Adafruit  DE0-Nano FPGA Development Kit  is available for $99.95 on the Adafruit website.

(Image Credit -Adafruit )

(Video Credit -Adafruit)

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