Altera announces availability of Cyclone V SoC development kit

HONG KONG: Altera Corp. announced the availability of its Cyclone V SoC Development Kit, a development platform that enables hardware and software developers to accelerate their embedded systems design development.

Developed in collaboration with ARM, this kit features the recently announced ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Altera Edition Toolkit software, the industry’s only FPGA-adaptive debugging software that enables designers to view the processor and FPGA portions of the device simultaneously.

The Cyclone V SoC Development Kit features the Cyclone V SX SoC with an 800 MHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor, 110K logic elements (LEs) of logic density, 3.125 Gbps transceivers, PCI Express (PCIe) rootport and endpoint support, and DDR3 memory for both the FPGA and hard processor system via hardened memory controllers.

The Altera SoC Embedded Design Suite (EDS) features the ARM DS-5 Altera Edition Toolkit that removes the debugging barrier between the integrated dual-core processor subsystem and FPGA fabric in Altera SoCs. By combining the most advanced multicore debugger for the ARM architecture with the ability to adapt to the logic contained in the FPGA, the new toolkit provides embedded software developers an unprecedented level of full-chip visibility and control through the standard DS-5 user interface.

An integrated USB-Blaster probe supports both FPGA and processor download and debug through the use of a single probe. An on-board MICTOR connector supports connection to other popular debug probes, such as the Lauterbach TRACE32 and ARM DSTREAM probes.

The kit includes a broad set of memories, peripherals, and interfaces, as well as a high-speed mezzanine connector (HSMC). The HSMC allows daughtercards to be added, extending system capabilities for a wide range of applications, including motor control, automotive driver assistance, and video surveillance. Two on-board Ethernet PHYs are provided that support all the top industrial networking protocols, including EtherCAT, PROFINET and EtherNet/IP.

The Altera Cyclone V SoC Development Kit is available for ordering now at $1,595 with production shipments in May 2013. Hardware development is supported in Quartus II Subscription and Web Editions, starting with the soon-to-be released Quartus II software version 13.0.

The SoC EDS v13.0 provides a complete set of software development tools and is available in two editions: Subscription Edition and the free Web Edition.