Hi, I was going to ask this in my other thread in general chat about Ordering from Mouser, but here seems more appropriate.
So, I used Lattice parts in university, and since moved to Altera but one cannot ignore the £20 MachXO2/3 boards - everything you need to get started, but no bells-whistles. Looks almost like an Arduino of the FPGA word, disposable boards. But there are two, the original based on the LCMXO2-7000, and one with LCMXO3LF-6900. The newer one (XO3) is slightly cheaper, but other than that I'm finding it hard to tell them apart. Sure the XO3 is newer, but they have pretty much the same no. of LUT's, same amount of block RAM, same hardened peripherals.
Whilst I would probably go for the newer XO3, is there any major difference between these two devices? I gathered both boards have 3.3V IO voltage, similar layout etc.. I noticed mike (mikeselectricstuff) used the machXO2 and was praising it - so I gather thats tried and tested, but if the XO3 is pretty much the same, or 'better' in someway, then I might as well go for that.
Cheers!
I watched the video, still none-the-wiser with regard to comparing the two! Even so doesn't look that different the the XO2, so might as well get the newer, cheaper board eh?
A small downside of the MachXO3 is that it isn't available in QFP packages making transferring the designs to a custom board a bit harder.
I watched the video, still none-the-wiser with regard to comparing the two! Even so doesn't look that different the the XO2, so might as well get the newer, cheaper board eh?
Maybe the difference is power consumption and IO speeds?
One or more of the DDR DRAM support primitives may have been rearranged or even deleted. DQSBUFH isn't in the XO3 docs, so check carefully if your plans include DDR memory support. Of course, XO3 support for DDR memory may be an improvement on the XO2.
Density is clear bettter
PARAMETERS MachXO3L-640/
MachXO3LF-640 MachXO3L-1300/
MachXO3LF-1300 MachXO3L-2100/
MachXO3LF-2100 MachXO3L-4300/
MachXO3LF-4300 MachXO3L-6900/
MachXO3LF-6900 MachXO3L-9400/
MachXO3LF-9400
Density LUTs 640 1300 2100 4300 6900 9400
XO2-256 XO2-640 XO2-640U XO2-1200 XO2-1200U XO2-2000 XO2-2000U XO2-4000 XO2-7000
Density LUTs 256 640 640 1280 1280 2112 2112 4320 6864
After having both family's datasheets up on screen - probably should have done this first, but I was more asking about 'gotchas' when switching between the two..
Yes, the MACHXO3's seem to have shifted up the LUT's, so the smallest XO3, is the second smallest XO2, with the largest XO3 being much larger than the largest XO2. But for the devices on the dev boards, (MachXO2-7000 vs MachXO3LF-6900) in terms of LUT's its 6864 vs 6900 - only 36 difference.
Same amount of distributed RAM, 54kbits (due to the same no of LUTs), same EBR SRAM 240kbits (=26 9kbit SRAM blocks). So I cannot find much of a difference at all in terms of user designs.
Either way, these boards have a surprisingly large and capable device. Smaller than my old Cyclone II board (EP2C8, 8256 LUTs) but that device is generally geared for processor cores, where-as isn't the MachXO2/3 more of a CPLD? as in more for interfaces/peripherals rather than a single chip solution - I guess that's where the hardened SPI and I2C ports come in very handy.
Anyways, solved, I'll go for the XO3, if I find something that makes the XO2 more suitable, I can just pick up one of those as well given the price.
I've looked at XO3 on occasion, but couldn't get past the range of packages on offer. It's clearly a range aimed at very dense, fine geometry PCBs, and they'd define both the layout rules and the capability requirement for whoever manufactures the board.
I still use Altera instead, everything comes in a nice easy QFP.
I think there are some diferences in IO blicks having to do with serialisers/deserialisers. They
are useful for doing high speed serial like LVDS, HDMI, MIPI etc.
The packages are not all terrible tho. They come in TQFP and QFN. Also the big 1mm pitch BGA can be routed out using normal cheep vias and can be soldered by hand fairly reliably sith just flux and a hot air gun. The rest of avalable packages are ineed absolutley evil tiny pitch BGA that need ludicrus PCB specs to route.