Digilent 410-087P-KIT - Manual (Page 13)

Spartan-3E Starter Kit Board User Guide www.xilinx.com 13
UG230 (v1.0) March 9, 2006
Design Trade-Offs R
• Four push-button switches
• SMA clock input
• 8-pin DIP socket for auxiliary clock oscillator
Design Trade-Offs
A few system-level design trade-offs were required in order to provide the Spartan-3E
Starter Kit board with the most functionality.
Configuration Methods Galore!
A typical FPGA application uses a single non-volatile memory to store configuration
images. To demonstrate new Spartan-3E capabilities, the starter kit board has three
different configuration memory sources that all need to function well together. The extra
configuration functions make the starter kit board more complex than typicalSpartan-3E
applications.
The starter kit board also includes an on-board USB-based JTAG programming interface.
The on-chip circuitry simplifies the device programming experience. In typical
applications, the JTAG programming hardware resides off-board or in a separate
programming module, such as the Xilinx Platform USB cable.
Voltages for all Applications
The Spartan-3E Starter Kit board showcases a triple-output regulator developed by Texas
Instruments, the
TPS75003 specifically to power Spartan-3 and Spartan-3E FPGAs. This
regulator is sufficient for most stand-alone FPGA applications. However, the starter kit
board includes DDR SDRAM, which requires its own high-current supply. Similarly, the
USB-based JTAG download solution requires a separate 1.8V supply.
Related Resources
• Xilinx MicroBlaze Soft Processor
http://www.xilinx.com/microblaze
•
Xilinx PicoBlaze Soft Processor
http://www.xilinx.com/picoblaze
•
Xilinx Embedded Development Kit
http://www.xilinx.com/ise/embedded_design_prod/platform_studio.htm
•
Xilinx software tutorials
http://www.xilinx.com/support/techsup/tutorials/
•
Texas Instruments TPS75003
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tps75003.html