Re: New PCI card developing

["Kevin Brace" <kevinbraceusenet@hotmail.com>]

>From: kevin.sharpe@btinternet.com
>To: sergey.platovskikh@vissim.no, pci-sig@znyx.com
>Subject: Re: New PCI card developing
>Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 14:30:02 +0100 (BST)
>
>I have used the QuickLogic products with great success.
>The PCI cores are fabricated on the silicon so you don't have any PCI place 
>and route issues.


        I have done my own synthesizable Verilog RTL target/initiator PCI IP 
core, and after months of struggle, I can meet 33MHz PCI's Tsu < 7ns with 
only a few minutes of automatic P&R with Spartan-II-5, although 36 FFs have 
to be handplaced far away from the pins to prevent a positive hold time.
That only takes about 5 minutes, and another 5 minutes or so to reP&R the 
design again.
Furthermore, Xilinx or Altera PCI IP cores come with placement constraint 
information, so as long as dealing with 33MHz PCI and a fairly new device, I 
strongly doubt that P&R is going to be a big issue.



>They have a suite of parts from 32bit targets through to 64bit 
>master/targets.
>  They correctly support universal card design by using dedicated VIO pins 
>(very rare!),


        I believe a universal PCI card is going to be a must for PCI 2.3, so 
QuickPCI users will likely not have to do anything.
I don't know what Xilinx or Altera is going to do about the universal card 
requirement issue.
I know that if a PCI card with Xilinx or Altera-based FPGAs have two bit 
streams, one for 3.3V PCI and one for 5V PCI, it can be a universal card, 
but the PCI card will need an external chip (I saw a company called 
Nallatech using a CPLD to do that.), and is Xilinx or Altera going to 
release the HDL code as a reference design for such a CPLD?



>and don't have the inherent problem of SRAM configuration (which > often 
>exceeds the PCI reset period).
>


        I don't own an oscilloscope, but I have never observed that problem 
with Spartan-II XC2S150.
        I suppose one nice thing about OTP device is that the design is 
secure, although I am sure it is costly during the development.



Kevin Brace (In general, don't respond to me directly, and respond within 
the mailing list.)

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