A10PL4 PCIe FPGA Board

Altera Arria 10 GX FPGA

Built on 20 nm process technology, the Arria 10 FPGAs feature industry-leading programmable logic that integrates a rich feature set of embedded peripherals, embedded high-speed transceivers, hard memory controllers, and protocol IP controllers. Variable-precision digital signal processing (DSP) blocks integrated with hardened floating point (IEEE 754-compliant) enable the Arria 10 to deliver floating-point performance of up to 1.5 TFLOPS. The FPGA supports Gen3 PCIe x8 via a hard IP block and provides up to 1150K equivalent LEs.

I/O Interfaces

The A10PL4 provides a variety of interfaces for high-speed serial I/O as well as debug support. Two QSFP cages are available on the front panel, each supporting 40GbE or four 10GbE channels. The QSFP SerDes channels are connected directly to the Arria 10 FPGA, thus removing the latency of external PHYs. The QSFP cages can optionally be adapted for SFP+.

The x8 PCIe interface provides 8 SerDes lanes to the Arria 10 FPGA. A USB 2.0 interface with built-in USB-Blaster is available for debug and programming support. The board also supports timestamping with an optional precision timing module, which features 1 PPS and reference clock inputs and outputs along with precision clock circuitry. The timing module option requires a full-height front panel.

Memory

The A10PL4 features up to 32 GBytes of DDR4 with optional error-correcting codes (ECC). Additional on-board memory includes flash memory with factory default and support for multiple FPGA images. An on-board PROM provides access to the board’s MAC ID.

OpenCL™ Support

The A10PL4 supports the Open Computing Language (OpenCL™) programming model, providing an incredibly powerful solution for system acceleration. Development tools for OpenCL include Altera’s SDK for OpenCL and BittWare’s OpenCL Developer’s Bundle.

Board Management Controller

Boards in BittWare’s A10 family feature an advanced system monitoring subsystem, similar to those typically found on today’s server platforms. At the heart of the board’s monitoring system lies a Board Management Controller (BMC), which accepts Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) messaging protocol commands. The BMC provides a wealth of features, including control of power and resets, monitoring of board sensors, FPGA boot loader, voltage overrides, configuration of programmable clocks, access to I2C bus components, field upgrades, and IPMI messaging. Access to the BMC is via PCIe or USB. BittWare’s BittWorks II Toolkit also provides utilities and libraries for communicating with the BMC components at a higher, more abstract level, allowing developers to remotely monitor the health of the board.

BwMonitor in the BittWorks II Toolkit provides a view into the board management capabilities of your BittWare hardware.

Development Tools

BittWorks II Toolkit

BittWare offers complete software support for the A10PL4 with its BittWorks II software tools. Designed to make developing and debugging applications for BittWare’s boards easy and efficient, the Toolkit is a collection of libraries and applications that provides the glue between the host application and the hardware. A variety of features allow developers to take full advantage of the Arria 10 FPGA capabilities on the BittWare board, including FPGA control via PCIe, Flash programming, custom ISR scripts, and convenient control of FPGA loads. The Toolkit supports 32-bit, and 64-bit Windows and Linux platforms and can connect to the board via PCIe or USB, providing a common API no matter the connection method.

FPGA Development Kit

BittWare’s FPGA DevKit provides FPGA board support IP and integration for BittWare’s Altera FPGA-based boards. The FDK includes FPGA components that provide preconfigured physical interfaces, infrastructure, and examples, drastically cutting development time and easily integrating into existing FPGA development environments.

Working example projects are available for each board which illustrate how to move data between the board’s different interfaces. Supported interfaces include DDR4, DDR3, DDR2, QDR2/+, PCIe, 10GbE, LVDS, SerDes, and Double Data Rate I/O. All example projects are available on BittWare’s Developer Site.

BittWare Firmware and Network Solutions Partners

BittWare offers firmware for the Arria 10 FPGA on the A10 family PCIe boards, targeted specifically for networking applications. BittWare’s FPGA framework provides a solid base for your application, including the following:

• 10GbE MAC
• PCIe multi-channel DMA engines
• DDR4 SDRAM and QDRII/II+ controllers

BittWare has also partnered with several companies to offer solutions for networking and financial acceleration:

• Algo-Logic: Market feed handler and low latency gateway libraries, MAC, TOE
• Argon Design: Design services specializing in multimedia and FPGA-based high performance trading
• Atomic Rules: Custom IP development, example UDP, precision timestamping, PCIe, networking
• Enyx: UOE, TOE, book building IP, order management IP, Market Feed Handler
• Intilop: Ultra low latency TOE, UOE, and MAC
• LDA Technologies: 25 GbE Networking enclosures for PCI Express compliant FPGA board platforms
• LeWiz: Ultra low latency, multi-session TOE IP cores
• PolyBus: Infiniband link layer and transport layer
• Tamba Networks: Ultra low latency 10/40 GigE MAC + PCS, TOE