Altera's High-Speed Board Design Advisor consists of a set of technical briefs, which provide proven and tested guidelines and best design practices for key aspects of your high-speed board design using Stratix® II GX FPGAs. Each technical brief includes step-by-step tutorials which take you from start to finish of each phase in your design. Furthermore, complementary design and review checklists, references to tools, reference designs, and support collateral are provided. Table 1 shows the series of available advisors.
| Table 1. High-Speed Board Advisor | |
| Advisor Documents | Description |
|---|---|
| Power Distribution Network (PDN) | Provides a methodology and tool flow to design your PDN including the voltage regular module, PCB, FPGA and the decoupling capacitor network |
| Thermal Management | Provides a tutorial about using the industry's most accurate power estimator for evaluation of the appropriate cooling solution |
| Pinout Definition | Provides a tutorial for early pinout definition and I/O analysis, pin definition and connection guidelines for all high-speed I/O pins and power supplies |
| High-Speed Channel Design and Layout | Provides guidelines for designing a high-speed channel |
| Hardware Integration, Test, and Debug | Provides guidelines for testing and debugging high-speed serial links including test & measurements techniques and debug methods provided by Quartus® II software |
Stratix II GX FPGAs are shipping in production to customers. Design with confidence and get your high-speed board design first-time-right. Use the High-Speed Board Design Advisor to improve your productivity while minimizing risk and cutting development time and cost.
Altera also offers Stratix II GX FPGA-based development kits, which deliver high-quality, proven implementations with board schematics, layout files, and board-specific guidelines. The Transceiver Signal Integrity Development Kit, Stratix II GX Edition, shown in Figure 1, enables a thorough evaluation of Stratix II GX transceiver signal integrity.
The following Stratix II GX development kits are available:
- PCI Express Development Kit, Stratix II GX Edition (PDF)
- Audio Video Development Kit, Stratix II GX Edition
Figure 1. Stratix II GX Transceiver Signal Integrity Development Board
The following resources are helpful to get you started designing with Altera® Stratix II GX FPGAs:
- Download Stratix II GX Literature and Utilities, including:
- Stratix II GX Handbook—comprehensive device information
- Stratix II GX PowerPlay Early Power Estimator
- Quartus II Design Software and Literature, including:
- Quartus II Handbook—programmable logic design manual from design to verification
- Stratix II GX Signal Integrity Center, including:
- Simulation models, link estimators, and third-party simulation tool models and design kits
- Stratix II GX Eye Diagram Viewer Online Characterization Tool
- Plug and Play Signal Integrity, offering adaptive equalization and hot-socketable transceivers
- High-Speed Serial I/O Solutions, including:
- Protocol solutions and intellectual property
