Microsemi Corporation has released the low-cost Igloo2 FPGA Evaluation Kit in the PCI Express (PCIe) form factor. The full-feature kit enables designers to quickly verify the integration, low-power, security, instant-on and high-reliability features of Microsemi’s recently announced Igloo2 FPGAs.

 

The Igloo2 FPGA Evaluation Kit includes a PCIe control plane demonstration design that streamlines and accelerates the development of transceiver I/O-based FPGA designs for systems based on PCIe and Gigabit Ethernet. The PCI Express form factor facilitates design, evaluation and development using a standard laptop with an ExpressCard slot or a desktop with a PCIe slot. Designers can also explore the high-performance memory system (HPMS) capabilities of Igloo2 FPGAs.

 

The Igloo2 FPGA Evaluation Kit features the 12K logic element M2GL010T-1FGG484 device and includes an RJ45 interface to 10/100/1000 Ethernet, Full-Duplex SerDes SMAs,  512 MB of LPDDR, 64 MB SPI flash, USB UART ports, and I²C, SPI and GPIO headers. The kit includes a 12 V power supply (but can also be powered via the PCIe edge connector) and a FlashPro4 JTAG programmer for programming and debugging. The kit enables the development and testing of PCIe Gen2 x1 lane designs, as well as testing of FPGA transceiver signal quality using full-duplex SerDes SMA pairs. Test points are conveniently brought out to allow easy power measurements with a standard digital multimeter.