Altium - Prototyping - in the time it takes to make and drink a cup of coffee
Published Nov 27 2009 [Printer friendly version] [Email article to a friend] [More Design & Manufacture articles]
An 'instant' deployment option has been introduced by Altium for its new
NanoBoard 3000 FPGA development board. Designers can now take their
FPGA-based designs from concept right through to deployment without the need
to create a custom PCB.
The instant deployment options come from being able simply to clip the
NanoBoard 3000 into a new range of enclosures designed in-house by Altium -
in less time than it takes to brew and drink a cup of coffee, says the
company.
Their modular form lets designers deploy FPGA–based designs created and
hosted on the NanoBoard 3000 in a number of different ways: on desks, on
walls, in either commercial or industrial locations, in extended options for
multiple board designs, with or without the TFT display that comes with the
enclosures.
With the NanoBoard 3000, FPGA-based prototypes are designed in days. The new
deployment option now means they are ready to be shipped to the field in
minutes.
The design quality of the new enclosures means that designers can now relish
presenting prototype designs to audiences as diverse as venture capitalists
and engineering directors, as well as peers and field test teams.
Instantly deploying the NanoBoard 3000 in the new modular enclosures gives
designers the option of creating small production runs in commercially
attractive cases, again without being compelled to manufacture custom
enclosures or custom PCBs.
Altium’s NanoBoard 3000 is a programmable design
environment supplied complete with hardware, software, ready-to-use,
royalty-free IP and a dedicated Altium Designer Soft Design license. This
is a complete design environment that lets electronics designers construct
sophisticated ‘soft’ processor-based systems inside FPGAs without any prior
FPGA expertise, specialist VHDL or Verilog skills. Designers simply use
their existing board layout and systems design skills to construct, test and
implement FPGA-based embedded systems. The supplied Altium Designer license
lets them select, drag and drop the large range of IP blocks to add
processors, memory controllers, peripherals and software stacks. Unlike
alternative programmable design environments, designers no longer need to
search the web for drivers, peripherals or other software, and then have the
hard work of integrating all these elements to make them work together.
The new NanoBoard 3000 enclosures mean that designers can now start with a
purely 'soft' prototype on the NanoBoard and then deploy it into the field.
But Altium Designer’s unified architecture also gives them the option of
upgrading to a board-level Altium Designer license and
moving into custom PCB design. Their 'soft' design work completed on the
NanoBoard 3000 is simply ready to be used on their custom PCB.
Weeks are saved on getting high-quality proof-of-concept prototypes designed
without any custom PCB design work required at all. Newcomers to FPGA design
have a low-risk, low-cost design environment that has everything they need
to get started. Experienced FPGA designers can use their expertise in new
ways to focus on creating the intelligence of their products.
Altium’s first NanoBoard 3000 features a Xilinx Spartan 3AN FPGA. Two more
NanoBoards, featuring Altera and Lattice FPGAs, are in manufacture and
design. The new deployment enclosures will accommodate all these NanoBoard
options, says the company.
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