Choose between Cyclone II and Spartan II

Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:06 am   

Hi All,

I am starting a new project for a software defined radio using FPGA. I
plan to use simulink and HDL coder with model based design. So far I
have narrowed down the hardware to cyclone II EP2C70 or Spartan-3A
XC3SD3400A.

Here is information I have collected:

Cost:
Cyclone II, board: DE2-70, $329 (education), EP2C70: 256$ or more
minimum order of 1 (from Digi-key).

Spartan 3A, can't find a board with XC3SD3400A. Closest one would be
XtremeDSP Development platform board: 1695$ (Board only), chip $67 or
more with minimum order of 84 (from Digi-key)

My question is what is the true cost of Cyclone II and Spartan 3A in
volume of 1000?

Software:
I also welcome comments on the experiences using simulink with Xilinx
and Altera software. I also
plan to use their Nios II or Microblaze. Any comment on the
performance?

Thanks a lot in advance,

Everett

Everett Wang Ph.D.
Professor,
College of Information Engineering
Guangdong University of Technology
Guangzhou, China

Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:25 am   

Everett

Have a look at Hollybush2 http://enterpoint.co.uk/products/spartan-3-development-boards/hollybush-2/
and our XC3SD3400A Coprocessor Module
http://enterpoint.co.uk/products/spartan-3-development-boards/xc3s3400a-coprocessor-board/
for XC3SD3400A based boards. Our Merrick1 also has this chip but it's
a bit of an extreme board for your application.

As to chip pricing that will vary a lot and the only way to be sure is
to get pricing from your local distributor.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On Nov 5, 3:06 am, Everett <ever...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sat Nov 05, 2011 10:14 pm   

On Nov 5, 5:06 am, Everett <ever...@gmail.com> wrote:

Why so old parts?
You can get development board with 5-6 times higher DSP power
(considering the differences in attainable frequency) for about the
same price:
http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=139&No=502

Cyclone II still may be (just may be) valuable at very low end (EP2C5
and EP2C8), but certainly not at 70K LEs size. At that size Cyclone
III is plain better. Not sure how Cyclone III and Cyclone IV E compare
to each other.