•  
• EDN Europe MAGAZINE
•  
• Free SUBSCRIPTION
• Subscription Renewal
• View Media Kit

• EDN
• EDN Australia
• EDN Asia
• EDN China
• EDN Japan

COM Express FPGA starter kit enables quick evaluation with flexible I/O

Kontron introduced the new COM Express starter kit featuring the Altera Cyclone IV GX FPGA. It provides all the required components to evaluate board designs with open-definable I/Os. With the COM Express FPGA Starterkit, OEM developers can get an immediate start in the development of FPGA-based, dedicated applications, thus reducing the overall R&D costs and time to market for their purpose-built platforms, claims the company. The starter kit is suitable for developers looking to build an application that relies on I/O unique to the application. The components of the starter kit are assembled in minutes allowing the user to move directly to programming on the platform that consists of the selected computer-on-module and the individual high speed Mezzanine cards to carry out the physical interfaces. OEMs can use the kit to develop dedicated full-custom SBC designs or individual custom carrierboards for scalable x86 based COMs, both with I/Os integrated in Altera's transceiver-based FPGA, Cyclone IV GX. The company offers development and manufacturing services that include revision management and industry-specific certifications including ITAR and ISO 13485 - a certification necessary for the design and manufacturing of medical devices. FPGA-based I/Os on x86 processor platforms are applicable to many target markets since FPGAs can universally map to nearly all I/Os.

Due to the FPGA-based implementation of I/Os in Altera's FPGAs, customers profit from a high level of flexibility that allows upgrades and/or modifications without any changes to the board layout. This will change the options of the x86 platforms' development and structure. Only the FPGA configuration and the mechanical implementation of the interfaces define the individual I/Os. This enables the use of one uniform hardware platform in various applications, reducing development efforts, time to market and overall total cost of ownership. OEMs also benefit from the improved long-term availability of the developed solution. The first evaluation models of the starter kit are available now.