Something like an FMC but cheaper? I might know something in the works like that.
Yeah, FMC is a bugger
I was just thinking it would be good to have a board with some signals on 0.1" pin headers for simple stuff and quick tests and some routed to a more high speed suited connector. On one of the dev. boards I have (Spartan 3E Starter Kit) uses Hirose FX2 for that, not extremely expensive, but I'm not sure it is high speed enough by today's standards.
My rant against Arduino headers is simply related to the fact that one of the points of an FPGA is to have a ton of IO (what sometimes is a problem in the hobbyist context with the crazy BGA packages FPGAs come in), so putting Arduino 20 something pins on a dev board is a joke (the same arguments stands for such feature rich MCU as STM32F7).
Often I would prefer something like system on module, in the FPGA or high performance MCU context probably not with 0.1" or 0.05" inch headers because pulling out a module with 100 pins is no fun
The downside is that, surprisingly!, such SoMs are (I think) not subsidized like popular dev. boards and often more expensive and available from 3rd party vendors, unrelated to manufacturer's marketing department. It baffles me, full blown dev. board has more connectors, components, features, accessories and is still cheaper than a SoM which is a tiny PCB with FPGA/CPU + SDRAM/FLASH, some power & clocks and 2-3 high density connectors or even cheaper - SODIMM 204 pin edge connector.
But it's getting better in that respect, TrenzElectronic makes nice FPGA SoMs, hotmcu.com Allwinner or AM335X based ones or Myirtech Z-turn Board with Zynq.