What FPGA boards can receive/send data to PC through USB?

[Berni]

I wonder if they don't wire it up for the parallel mode because that requires host driver support, as it needs to conform to some Vendor-Specific class and not a standard Class? That means host software, too.

I am guessing they mostly just reused the FTDI chip JTAG trick from cheep JTAG dongles for microcontrollers where having a extra UART is the most useful interface to have, so that you can easily interface your application with terminal on the PC. Even then these interfaces are rarely pushed to really high baudrates when they are mostly just printing some debug info to a terminal.

The usual way of offering high bandwidth connectivity is sticking gigabit ethernet on a dev board. The PHYs for it are cheap and it can reliably do near full 1Gbit in both directions simultaneously for near 2Gbit of total bandwidth. The same port can also be used to link up multiple dev boards to each other. Quite a few industrial electronics involving PCs also use ethernet in the final product due to its resilience. But for development it is indeed pretty inconvenient.

[SiliconWizard]

For the record, it's interesting to note that, while many FPGA dev boards include the FT2232H chip (because it can be used as a JTAG interface very easily), most of them only route the second channel as a UART interface, while routing a few more IOs would allow the async (or better yet, the sync) parallel mode. Of course, you can always quickly add this kind of interface using a FT2232H breakout board and connecting it to your FPGA board (keep connections short for parallel modes.)

I wonder if they don't wire it up for the parallel mode because that requires host driver support, as it needs to conform to some Vendor-Specific class and not a standard Class? That means host software, too.

For most such boards I've seen, the FTDI chip still had the original FTDI VID and PID (and not a custom one) and thus the required driver is already there on the mainstream OSs without anything extra to install. Without such drivers, the JTAG interface would not work either anyway, there's nothing "standard" about it. You NEED FTDI drivers to make them work in JTAG, at least on Windows.

So, I dunno. It's just probably because the designers either want to save IOs for their customers, or because they don't even know about the parallel interface of those FTDI chips and merely all re-use common application notes/schematics from their competitors, and they all do the exact same. Laziness.

But as we mentioned, Numato has done this, and it's handy. Otherwise, as I said, it's not hard to use an extra breakout board for a FT232H for instance and some wiring, but embedding a FT2232H on board and not being able to use it "fully" is just waste IMHO.

[langwadt]

For the record, it's interesting to note that, while many FPGA dev boards include the FT2232H chip (because it can be used as a JTAG interface very easily), most of them only route the second channel as a UART interface, while routing a few more IOs would allow the async (or better yet, the sync) parallel mode. Of course, you can always quickly add this kind of interface using a FT2232H breakout board and connecting it to your FPGA board (keep connections short for parallel modes.)

I wonder if they don't wire it up for the parallel mode because that requires host driver support, as it needs to conform to some Vendor-Specific class and not a standard Class? That means host software, too.

For most such boards I've seen, the FTDI chip still had the original FTDI VID and PID (and not a custom one) and thus the required driver is already there on the mainstream OSs without anything extra to install. Without such drivers, the JTAG interface would not work either anyway, there's nothing "standard" about it. You NEED FTDI drivers to make them work in JTAG, at least on Windows.

if they don't have their own VID/PID they might not have an eeprom on the FTDI an that is required to use sync fifo mode

[mon2]

Have not read through this entire thread...sorry.

Have a look at:

https://ftdichip.com/products/morph-ic-ii/

Available in stock @ DK. Pre-covid prices were less, of course. There is also Opal Kelly and I know we have one of their USB 3.0 FPGA boards in the lab.

If you are fine to consider using the UART / Serial port over USB as a communication channel with your FPGA, then there is also the Lattice kits which feature the FTDI2232H devices.

There are also the FTDI USB 3.1 ICs they created to mate with the Altera / XILINX targets but no idea on their stock position.

Then there is the Cypress / Infineon USB 3.1 bridge FX3 IC they created + Altera package (we have this in the building as well).

https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/evaluation-boards/cyusb3kit-003/?utm_source=cypress&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=202110_globe_en_all_integration-dev_kit

Some ideas to explore..

[mc68000]

Here is the board with 2 different FPGA. Each can do Rx and Tx.
https://www.gowinsemi.com/en/support/devkits_detail/36/