Overview

The Atlas-SoC kit combines a robust, Cyclone® V SoC-based development board and interactive reference design into a powerful development platform. This low-cost kit serves an interactive, web-based "guided tour" that lets you quickly learn the basics of SoC FPGA development and provides an excellent platform on which to develop your own SoC FPGA design.

Cyclone V SoCs integrate a dual-core ARM® Cortex®-A9 MPCore™ hard processor, peripherals, and memory interfaces with FPGA fabric using a high-bandwidth interconnect backbone. They combine the performance and power savings of a hard processor system (HPS) with the flexibility of programmable logic.

Board Photos

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Board Block Diagram

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System Block Diagram

Kit Features

The Atlas-SoC Development Platform features the following:

• Cyclone V SE development board
  • Featured devices
    • Cyclone V SE SoC—5CSEMA4U23C6N (SoC)
    • MAX II CPLD—EPM570GF100 (embedded USB-Blaster^TM II cable)
  • FPGA configuration sources
    • Embedded USB-Blaster II (JTAG) cable
    • Serial configuration flash - EPCS128
    • Hard processor system (HPS)
  • FPGA I/O interfaces
    • x2 push buttons
    • x4 slide switches
    • x8 LEDs
    • Three 50MHz clock sources from the clock generator
    • Two 40-pin expansion header with diode protection
    • One Arduino expansion header (Uno R3 compatibility), can connect with Arduino shields.
    • One 10-pin Analog input expansion header. (shared with Arduino Analog input)
    • 8-channel, 12-bit A/D converter, 500ksps 4-pin SPI interface with FPGA
  • Hard Processor System (HPS)
    • 925MHz Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor
    • 1GB DDR3 SDRAM (32-bit data bus)
    • 1 Gigabit Ethernet PHY with RJ45 connector
    • 1 USB OTG port, USB Micro-AB connector
    • Micro SD card socket
    • 1 4GByte SD Card flash
    • Accelerometer (I2C interface + interrupt)
    • UART to USB, USB Mini-B connector
    • Warm reset button and cold reset button
    • One user button and one user LED
    • LTC 2x7 expansion header
  • Embedded software
    • Linux kernel 4.0
    • Angstrom v2014.12 Yocto 1.7
  • FPGA hardware design
    • 32 bit fast Fourier transform (FFT)
    • x2 direct memory access (DMA)
    • 4k SRAM buffer
    • General-purpose I/O (GPIO) for LEDs, push buttons, and slide switches

Getting Started

• Getting Latest SD Card Image
• Booting Linux
• Compiling Hardware Design and Preloader
• Compiling Angstrom Linux Distribution
• Creating and Updating SD Card
• Altera SoC Workshop Series

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How the Atlas-SoC and DE0-Nano-SoC University Kit are Related

The Altas-SoC development platform uses the same printed circuit board as the DE0-Nano-SoC University kit. Both kits come with a unique set of reference designs, tools, and documentation providing very different user experiences. Here's how to decide which is better for you:

• Atlas-SoC: Designed for the embedded software developer. It boots Linux, runs web and VNC servers, and provides reference designs, development tools, and tutorials to accelerate the learning curve of developing software for SoCs.
• DE0-Nano-SoC: Designed for the hardware developer. It provides reference designs and tutorials to guide you through your first FPGA, HPS, and system designs.

Can’t decide which to use? Here’s how to get them both.

Regardless of which kit you have, the reference designs, tools, documentation, and SD card images are available for free download. Because the hardware is the same, you can turn an Atlas-SoC kit into a DE0-Nano-SoC kit, or visa-versa, with a simple download and flash card update. Here's where to get the kit "soft" content:

• Atlas-SoC: SD Card image available on Rocketboards.org here
• DE0-Nano-SoC: CD ROM available for download at the Terasic web site here

Feedback

If you have used the kit and would like to provide feedback to help make the next version even better, please click here.