A Review of the Cyclone V GX Starter Kit
Orlando Arias
My name is Dr. Orlando Arias and I am an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I head the Secure by Design Laboratory at the university which focuses on hardware-assisted cybersecurity solutions, methods for HDL analysis, and fault characterization. I also teach Advanced Digital Systems Design (ADSD), a hybrid graduate and undergraduate class as well a Practical Hardware Security and Cryptography class. It must be said that Intel and Terasic’s unyielding support has made these classes the success they are. We would like to express our gratitude for their help in ensuring that we have both quality software and hardware for students to utilize.
We are starting to utilize the Cyclone V GX Starter Kit in ADSD to great success. We lend these boards to students for the duration of the semester so that they can work outside of class. The boards are of high quality and mechanically sturdy, which allows for ease of transport. The acrylic shield further protects the board from extraneous components falling on top of the delicate components while students are performing experiments.
In class, students make use of the board to create unclonable functions, computational accelerators to generate fractals in real time, perform timing closure on designs that contain multiple clock domains, as well as develop and package intellectual property cores. With the Cyclone V GX Starter Kit, students are able to see the physical manifestation of their hardware designs, bringing a satisfying conclusion to their efforts. The kit is extremely easy to use, is effortless to get started with, and provides a genuinely enjoyable user experience.
We are so satisfied with the kit and its performance that we are currently experimenting with the ability to use this board in other classes, such as Computer Architecture as well as Microprocessors I and II. In collaboration with Jesse Taube, a Junior Undergraduate student, we are developing multiple RISC-V cores for students to experiment with on real devices, not just a simulation environment. We are planning on using the IP developed by students in ADSD in conjunction with these RISC-V cores to further enhance student experience. With this, students will be able to write software for the same cores they have developed, further rounding our Computer Engineering curriculum.
The Cyclone V GX Starter Kits are also being used by students in directed studies-based projects. The collection of on-board peripherals allows for students to perform a wide array of experiments and projects without the need for external hardware. Furthermore, easy integration with already existing hardware by providing Arduino-compatible headers extends the capabilities of an already capable platform to stratospheric heights. Overall, the Cyclone V GX Starter Kits is phenomenal, and it has allowed us to enhance our curriculum to new heights. We would like to once again thank Intel and Terasic for providing us with these materials. We are happy to share images of our success in this front. These can be found below.
(a) Laboratory computer setup running Quartus Prime and FPGA board connected to machine.
(b) Prototype of the μUML-V (read as micro UML five) core on the FPGA, a core being developed for our Computer Architecture class. The seven segment displays are being driven by an IP core developed in Advanced Digital Systems Design.
(c) Prototype SoC with the μUML-V core and peripherals.
Professor: Dr. Orlando Arias
University of Massachusetts Lowell
The University of Southern Mindanao, Department of Electronics Engineering, extends its heartfelt gratitude to Intel® and Terasic for the generous donation of FPGA boards. These advanced tools are enabling our students to gain practical experience and enhance their learning in digital design and system implementation.
About e-Yantra
e-Yantra – a project in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), IIT Bombay, Mumbai, INDIA - is a flagship project of the Ministry of Education (MoE) through the National Mission on Education through ICT (NMEICT) to spread Embedded systems and Robotics education in colleges across India. e-Yantra complements the existing higher education system through project-based learning. e-Yantra, a robotics outreach project at IIT Bombay has successfully trained over 200,000+ students through various initiatives, and a popular one is the Robotics competition among young engineers in India.
Training and Competition e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC) e-Yantra’s signature robotics competition started in 2012 and this year we have trained 10,800 students through our competition in complex engineering skills through project based learning. Every year we have different problem statements divided into themes.
Since 2020, we have been using DE0-Nano boards to train students in our yearly competition. The problem statement centred around leveraging the DE0-Nano board's capabilities. Our training has covered various topics, including Verilog HDL for FPGA programming, sensor interfacing, actuators and pick-place mechanism, harnessing parallel processing for enhanced computational efficiency, developing sophisticated path planning algorithms, and integrating wireless communication. A pinnacle of our training evolution this year was the implementation of a RISC-V CPU on theFPGA. This significant thematic shift challenged our team and highlighted the DE0-Nano board's adaptability and performance in handling complex computational tasks. Some of the features of the DE0-Nano board we found helpful over other products:
- Form factor: support of the ~22K LUTs with 32MB SDRAM available makes it the right choice for the application we want to develop.
- Easy to use: for beginners, the board comes in handy for porting the design from Quartus software on the FPGA; it is functionally easy to set up the tools and realise the design.
- Support: the documentation
e-Yantra is a flagship project of the Ministry of Education that is conducted by us at IIT Bombay that runs such competitions to train young engineers by challenging them to solve real-world problems through robotics. This year's edition, themed "Space Exploration," features the Astro-Tinker' theme that has the participants learn Verilog programming to program a robot built using your FPGA board.
We wish to invite your team to the e-Yantra Robotics Competition Grand Finale on March 22nd - 23rd, 2024 at IIT Bombay. We'd be happy to have your team member as a Jury member for the AstroTinker Bot (AB) on March 22, 2024 at 1615 to 1800 (IST) where students will showcase their work around the DE0-Nano board.
Ajit M Harpude Assistant Project Manager. |
Intel Israel Innovation team
Intel Israel Innovation team has been diving deep into the world of FPGA education and prototyping, specifically using Altera's powerful platforms, and the experience has been nothing short of transformative. Running workshops focused on creating retro games directly on RTL with VGA screens has opened up a new dimension of creativity and learning. The feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive, showcasing the engaging and educational nature of these sessions.
We've been utilizing Terasic platforms, which have proven to be exceptionally reliable and versatile for our competitions. Their performance and compatibility with Altera FPGAs have significantly contributed to the success of our workshops, allowing participants to push the boundaries of digital design and gaming.
We highly recommend our workshops to anyone interested in diving into FPGA development or looking to relive the classic era of retro gaming with a modern twist. It's a unique opportunity to learn, create, and compete. We invite everyone to join us on this exciting journey at cpugarage.co.il, where the world of FPGA opens up endless possibilities for innovation and fun.
You are welcome to get a look at our latest competition where engineers and students developed games on RTL alone: https://cpugarage.co.il/competitions/2 .
Avi Salmon Head of Intel Israel innovation office. |
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL
Terasic has been a great partner in providing wonderful FPGA boards. We have been using several models in research over many years. We have also been using the DE10-Lite board in classes related to digital systems design. Students are guided in hands-on laboratory sessions, and then carry over a prototyping project using the on-board modules as well as additional extension boards or modules that are placed on the GPIO extension ports. The boards are very reliable and the development environment is very flexible which creates excellent conditions for an efficient learning curve during the class and also further in self-teaching, as the boards are commercially available at a reasonable price.
SProf. Alexandre Schmid Head, EPFL SCI STI AXS Group |
Altera (Now Intel® )
I am responsible for Mobile Backhaul/Carrier Ethernet Switching at Altera. We use this [ SFP ] board coupled with standard Altera dev kits to give us the connectivity we need to build an Ethernet switch. They are very useful boards.
Mark Lewis,
Engineering Manager, Altera (Now Intel®
)
AGH University of Science and Technology
My name is Jacek Dlugopolski. I live in Poland and work at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow.
Personally, I am passionate person about all new and futuristic technologies and theories. FPGA is one of such Technology.
Understanding the advantages and possibilities of FPGA technology is like realizing that the Earth, however, is not flat :-) but is one of a multitude of other parallel celestial bodies interacting with each other in various ways within a three- or more-dimensional world. The transition from using microprocessors to using FPGAs is also a bit like a transition from the classical world to the quantum universe. The FPGA feature of massive parallelism gives you the amazing ability to build naturally parallel information-processing algorithms, that mimic the behavior of our real world much better and without unnecessary delays. I am very grateful to Terasic Inc. for promoting this technology and creating so many different modules that help people use FPGAs.
Personally, I use many Terasic's products, such as: DE2 , DE2-70 , DE0-nano , DE10-lite and others based on Intel's: Cyclone, MAX10 and Stratix families of FPGAs. All these Terasic products are very helpful, professionally designed and built, and also are very reliable. I also have very positive experiences in contact with the Company.
School: AGH University of Science and Technology Jacek Dlugopolski Position: Senior Lecturer |
Design Spark
"Over all this [ DE0-Nano ] board not only looks nice but come with good on board features and has good support on the CD in the form of circuits, datasheets, tools etc. There are also step by step worked examples on writing your first FPGA and even on developing the NIOS II processors. I think this will make a great first FPGA kit for people to learn on and then move on to developing with."
Paul Clarke via Design Spark
Russian Space Systems
"My experience of programming FPGA has started when I purchased DE0 Nano . I belive that I was lucky that I bought that board, because DE0 Nano helped me to do first steps in programming FPGA by using detailed description how to create first project, code of first program and how to program device in User manual. This board have all you need to begin program FPGA:
- detailed description user manual;
- programmer, configuration flash memory chip and FPGA Cyclone IV on one board;
- many pins to control the behavior of your design and connect them somewhere;
- low cost.
I like DE0 Nano and then I bought DE10 Nano . It has high perfomance SoC: Cyclone V FPGA and ARM processor. Also It is able to connect Arduino board to DE10 Nano . And today I got Max 10 Plus Board. All my perchases have high quality and very attractive prices. I hope that I will enjoy Max 10 Plus Board, as I enjoyed using Nano boards!"
Galiev Rinat, Electronic Engineer Russian Space Systems |
Hasselt University
"My personal thanks to Terasic for always providing high quality products, excellent service and support.
Students liked Terasic's boards a lot. It's always interesting to explore the possibilities of FPGA with your boards in class. I especially cherish the help and friendship from Terasic.
I use DE1-SoC in the majority of my courses, as thus students can take advantage of this board to perform FPGA-related lab and project."
A glimpse into students' projects with Terasic FPGA boards this semester:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dduZ2esiUhk
"
Prof. Luc CLAESEN,
Professor of Engineering Technology,
Hasselt University, Belgium
IEEE
"The [ DE3 ] board is well made, very densely designed and reliable. I do plan to continue using it for new developments in 2011."
Jason Pearce – IEEE, California
Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory
I would like to express my immense pleasure with the unbeatable service provided to us by the team at Terasic led by Mr. Sean Peng and Ms. Teresa Wei. Together we have developed a complex, 20 layer circuit board that included three FPGAs (each with ~600 pins), DRAM, SRAM, flash memory, ethernet, USB, RS-232, etc. In may ways, it was a multi-processor PC motherboard that used FPGAs instead of microprocessors...more
William W. Moses – Senior Staff Scientist, IEEE Fellow, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Califonia |
Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory
Terasic did much much more than just provided this layout service. They performed a thorough review of the schematics and identified design flaw that resulted in corrections and enhancements in the design. They did a superb job in fabricating the boards and in performing a thorough test of the fabricated boards. They were very accommodating to every modifications and requests we made. In addition, they went above and beyond what we requested and sometimes absorbing some of the costs. They were very professional and performed their work to meet our timeline...more
Woon-Seng Choong – Staff Scientist, new Principle leader for this OpenPET project Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Califonia |
University of Leeds
"We use this [ DE2 ] platform at both undergraduate and masters level for the teaching of system-on-chip. It is important to back up academic concepts with hands-on learning. With all the flexibility offered on this platform, project are only limited by ingenuity and imagination."
Dr Steven Freear,
Lecturer in System-On-Chip, University of Leeds
McGill University
I have been teaching an intermediate lab/lecture course on Digital Systems Design since 1997. In this course we have been exclusively using Altera development boards and software (Quartus) since 1998.
Since 2008 we have been using Terasic boards, the DE1 and, most recently, the DE1-SoC . In combination with the Altera Quartus software, these boards have perfectly suited the needs of our laboratory exercises for the course. Students are able to design digital hardware using VHDL and then compile and download to the Terasic boards to test and debug their designs. The more recent SoC boards allow us to give students exercises in hardware-software co-design, which dovetails nicely with recent changes in our computer engineering curriculum streams.
I also value the University Program, as it provides a wealth of useful material for course development and helpful information for students.
Professor James Clark–
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University
Manhattan College
I am very pleased that I was able to work with Altera and terasIC to have the boards ordered and shipped within the short time-frame that we were dealing with. My hope, initially, was to get everything set up for the up-coming semester in January, but with the hardware arriving in mid-October it became possible for me to make use of the new boards much sooner. It was a good thing, too, since otherwise I had nothing useable for the current semester’s Introduction to Digital Systems class.
The students absolutely love using the new hardware and software, and they are looking forward to using them, again, next semester in the follow-on Computer Organization course. Our plan is to integrate this hardware design environment into several core and elective courses throughout the four years of the computer engineering program. Now, all I need to do is find money for new PCs that are better suited to running the Quartus software.
Doug Godsoe, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Manhattan College
Mercury Consulting Group
I was evaluating the Altera development boards for Stratix IV and became concerned that there may be a lot of work and troubleshooting just to get the first pixels to display correctly and memory working correctly, even before adding special DSP functions. My experience with Terasic was that I could have the system producing useful results (worried about video but more importantly good sound DDR memory) quickly and proceed with the custom modification from there. Also I am trying to make sure I don’t get bogged down on repetitive tasks that the System Builder helps with such as pin definitions.
Bil Herd
President / Founder of Mercury Consulting Group
Milwaukee School of Engineering
Our school has been making great use of the DE0 Nano SoC development boards and the LT24 touchscreens as a tool to understand digital logic and embedded system. Us students have found the equipment produced by Terasic to be reliable, easy to use, and well documented.
Hughes, Kevin
Senior Computer Engineering Student
Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE)
Multimedia University
We are really grateful that Terasic is producing feature rich FPGA development boards and at the same time making those development boards available at affordable prices for the academia. The boards enable us as academicians and students to learn and have hands-on experience on the latest technology in both digital logic design and embedded systems. The hands-on experience with your development boards definitely help us in becoming proficient digital logic designers. Thanks for the good job.
Thum Chia Chieh,
Lecturer, Faculty of Engineering and Technology Multimedia University
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Thank you corporately and individually. I know you each made “magic” happen for get 85 MAX 10 DE10-Lite FPGA boards to us so quickly. We are already distributing them to our students. More great news to follow.
Thank you from all of us at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s College of Engineering.
Dr. John Kelly
Associate Professor
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Pioneer School of Monastir
"I bought DE1 board last year to do my project, this board is really one of the most successful boards in the worlds thanks to its performance and low cost price, I was very happy to work with such board and such technology and the resources and tutorials provided by terasic helped me very much to gain experience and to do a very big step learning the fpga technology, Using the DE1 board I developed my skills and I won in many competitions."
Ghaith Allah Chebil, Pioneer School of Monastir, Tunisia 2014/01/27 |
Rowan University
For almost two decades Rowan University has relied on terasIC to provide high quality FPGA development kits for students to learn about digital systems, computer architecture, and embedded systems. I have been requiring the DE0-Nano , DE0, and/or DE10-Lite in my courses and it has really helped because it allows the students to keep experimenting outside of the lab. We are extremely satisfied with the products, sales, and support and will continue to use terasIC development kits well into the future.
Michael D Muhlbaier Instructor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Rowan University, New Jersey |
Stanford University
Terasic has been an excellent partner enabling us to deploy Intel / Altera products for our advanced FPGA / SoC lab classes. They always provide professional help in a timely manner. Terasic, thank you for doing such a wonderful job!"
Steven Clark,
Ph.D. Instructional Labs Manager,
Electrical Engineering Department, Stanford University
University of Eastern Philippines
I am Engr. BLESS G. AMPUAN, currently working as Instructor in University of Eastern Philippines. I am honored and grateful to the Intel FPGA Academic Program through the Terasic, for donating DE10-Standard which will be utilized for instructional and research purposes. The boards were utilized by the electrical engineering students in their subjects ECE311 Logic Circuit and Switching Theory and ECE321 Microprocessor Systems. The FPGA is somehow new to us, at first we find it complicated but right we read the user manual, these boards are very helpful and interesting in school laboratory activities. My students are very enthusiastic to use the said boards. I highly recommend DE10-Standard because the board itself is so comprehensive and a very powerful electronic kit which can be used for school and research outputs. Thank you Terasic for this powerful FPGA boards.
Instructor: Engr. Bless G. Ampuan |
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
"Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UNLV has been using Terasic's Altera boards for years. DE2 , DE2-115 , DE2i-150 and DE0-CV are used for laboratory and lecture classes. These boards greatly fit to the educational needs. They have the exact peripherals that are needed for classes, also the GPIO ports are very useful for interfacing external components. Boards work with PC software, which is very good for the design and simulation."
Dr. Grzegorz Chmaj
CPE Laboratory Director, Academic Graduate Faculty
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
"I bought the DE0 development kit last year, it works very well. I've used it to control an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle for Antarctic Exploration, this is my research project. I was tested the AUV in Antarctic environment last month. The DE0 development kit performs very well in Antarctic environment."
Arturo E Cadena
Unmanned Vehicles Researcher, Ecuador
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
"For some initial feedback I just wanted to briefly comment on the DE2 board . I have experience with the Altera based boards both UP2 and UP3 and Xilinx based boards Xess XSA-100 and Burched B5-X300. All of these boards have pros and cons associated with them.
In my opinion, the DE2 board is hands down the best board I have ever seen. It is clear from reading through documentation and inspecting the pcb. This board is well thought out. Even down to the design examples provided, it is the best documented board I have seen. <--- you can quote me on that!"
Douglas Hodson,
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
XINADIST
I am in charge of training, outsourcing development, and consulting at XINADIST that is an Intel FPGA Technical Training Partner. I have often seen many researchers and developers successfully carrying out their projects using boards and documentation provided by Terasic. They could reduce the development time using Terasic's evaluation boards with the latest FPGAs such as Stratix10, Arria10, MAX10.
The photos below show how we educate with the DE1-SoC board in a classroom in one of the Korean universities. Terasic boards embed USB blaster I or II and you don't need to by a JTAG download cable. Since you can easily connect it to a computer and operate the boards in conjunction with Quartus, you can quickly model and verify the operation using Verilog-HDL or VHDL. In addition, using microprocessor cores such as NiosII and RISC-V, you can easily verify IPs. Lastly, you can practice linux-based OS porting, device drivers, and various applications using the families of Stratix, Arria, and Cyclone V SoC.
XINADIST
Aaron Yang principal engineer
"I am an existing customer of the DE1 board and let me start by saying that this is has been one of the best purchases that I have made as an FPGA engineer. Working with the DE1 was(is) fun and the support given from Terasic (on using IDE cables etc.) was really really helpful. All in all a very delightful experience!"
Gregory Matthew James, India
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