Re: Whats the Recommended Buffer for PCI devices?

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

Abraham,

To answer your question, you should be using at least an FPGA to interface 
to the PCI bus.
While there are several vendors (Xilinx, Altera, Actel, Quicklogic, and 
Lattice) that sell FPGAs, I personally recommend going with Xilinx.
The reason I recommend Xilinx is because Xilinx lets you use their software 
for free (ISE WebPACK and ModelSim XE-Starter), a company called Insight 
Electronics sells a low cost ($250) PCI prototyping kit, and because Xilinx 
FPGAs are SRAM-based, you can reprogram the FPGA without having to throw 
away the chip (However, this becomes a liability when you move the product 
into production because the external PROM's content can easily be stolen.).
I recommend avoiding Altera because their floorplanner and P&R tool have too 
many problems compared to Xilinx's software.
Most Actel and all Quicklogic parts are OTP (One Time Programmable) 
anti-fuse FPGAs which means that once you program the chip, you cannot 
reprogram the chip.
In my opinion, that will be pretty costly during prototyping, although it's 
an advantage after the product is sold because no one will be able to steal 
and reproduce the design.
        One more thing to consider when picking an FPGA is that not all 
FPGAs support 5V PCI bus.
In case of Xilinx, Virtex and Spartan-II are the last FPGAs that support 5V 
PCI.
5V PCI support is still important because almost all PC motherboards out 
there have only 5V PCI slots.
Newer parts don't support 5V PCI, although they do support 3.3V PCI.
        Since you also asked a question in a different posting (I Need a 
PCI-based general purpose PCB in INDIA) about where to obtain a PCI 
prototype board, I will say that the cheapest PCI prototype board you can 
get is Insight Electronics Spartan-II 200 PCI Development Kit.
The PCI card alone without Xilinx LogiCORE PCI license sells for $250.
Insight Electronics should be able to ship the card overseas.
I used the older version of this card to test a PCI IP core I developed by 
myself, and eventually I got it to work correctly.
The whole project cost me only $700.


Kevin Brace (In general, don't respond to me directly, and respond to the 
mailing list E-mail address.)



>From: Abraham Thomas <abraham_ktm@yahoo.com>
>To: pci-sig@znyx.com
>Subject: Whats the Recommended Buffer for PCI devices?
>Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 05:43:49 -0800 (PST)
>
>hello experts,
>
>i just wanted to know:
>
>In VME, the recommended buffer is '543, what is it in
>case of PCI?
>
>thanks again,
>Abraham
>
>
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