ARM/Xilinx Laboratory Board
This page is currently just a placeholder for collecting
information.
All documentation should be regarded as temporary.
This system was developed for teaching microcontroller hardware and
programming by the Scool of
Computer Science at the University
of Manchester. It was designed to be a cheap single-board
computer for a teaching laboratory, but, with the inclusion of certain
extra devices, be able to support larger projects including
significant hardware development.
The system comprises an ARM-based computer enhanced with one or two
FPGAs providing user-configurable processing and I/O. Features include:
- ARM7TDMI microcontroller (AT91)
- Two serial lines
- Three counter/timers
- Interrupt controller
- Watchdog
- etc.
- 2Mbytes Flash ROM (in-circuit or remotely programmable)
- up to 4Mbytes RAM
- Character LCD
- LEDs and buttons
- Ethernet interface
- Xilinx Spartan FPGA
- ~10K user-programmable gates
- 48 user-available I/O signals
- Xilinx Virtex FPGA
- ~300K user-programmable gates
- 64 user-available I/O signals
- another 16 user-available I/O signals shared with Spartan FPGA
- up to 2Mbytes (32-bit wide) local RAM
- Expansion bus
- Single DC supply
("Spartan" & "Virtex" are Xilinx® trademarks)
Datasheets
The picture below shows the system downloading and displaying pictures
from an Ethernet. The video controller is in part of an FPGA.
Picture courtesy of Matthew Evans.
Some examples of use:
Please address any comments, enquiries etc. to:
jgarside@cs.man.ac.uk