dev-boards

Connecting U.2 NVMe SSDs to FPGAs

A solution using Mini Cool Edge IO and FMC

Posted on April 10, 2025 | Jeff Johnson

U.2 NVMe SSDs are the types of drives that are commonly used in enterprise servers and data centers. Compared to M.2 NVMe SSDs, which are more commonly found in consumer devices, U.2 drives are physically bigger, using the same form factor as the 2.5 inch SATA SSDs. The bigger form factor allows U.2 drives to consume more power and thus deliver higher sustained performance than their equivalent M.2 versions. This performance advantage is the reason why U. [Read More]

Versal PL NVMe SSD Speed Test

Using Versal AI Edge Series VEK280

Posted on December 2, 2024 | Jeff Johnson

Hands down, the best solution for non-volatile storage on Versal designs, is NVMe solid-state drives. One of the main reasons why they are such a good fit is because they interface with the host device over PCI Express. Versal Prime, AI Core and AI Edge devices all have integrated PCIe blocks, and most of them are PCIe Gen5 compliant. This means that there are no extra IP costs to connect an NVMe SSD to the Versal devices because everything you need is already built into the device. [Read More]

Quick look at Ethernet FMC Max

Opsero's new gigabit Ethernet FMC with SGMII

Posted on October 9, 2024 | Jeff Johnson

Ten years ago, almost to the day, I launched the Opsero Ethernet FMC. To my delight and surprise, many of our customers are still buying them today. Gigabit Ethernet still finds many uses in FPGA designs today, because it is simple to setup, the cabling is easy to buy and install, the throughput is ample for many applications and it is extremely versatile. This year, I felt that it was time to upgrade our Ethernet FMC offering, so we’ve launched two new products: Quad SFP28 FMC which I have introduced to you in earlier posts (here and here), and Ethernet FMC Max, which I would like to introduce to you in this post. [Read More]

Introducing the Quad SFP28 FMC

High-speed Ethernet connectivity for FPGAs

Posted on July 16, 2024 | Jeff Johnson

In the next few days I will kick off the launch of another new Opsero FMC product: the Quad SFP28 FMC. This FMC card has 4x SFP28 slots that are compatible with SFP, SFP+ and SFP28 modules. The FMC and the reference designs that we are currently developing will enable 4x 10G/25G Ethernet links on a multitude of FPGA/MPSoC/RFSoC development boards including the newer Versal ACAP boards. We’ve already pushed working 10G/25G designs to the Github repo for the ZCU104, ZCU102, ZCU106, ZCU111 and ZCU208 with more coming soon. [Read More]

The M.2 M-key Stack FMC Unveiled

A fresh approach to getting more from FMC

Posted on April 3, 2024 | Jeff Johnson

The FPGA Mezzanine Card standard (VITA 57.1) has significantly enhanced the FPGA ecosystem by decoupling the FPGA board from the input/output components. Years ago, if you wanted to process samples from an ADC, you would buy an FPGA board with an on-board ADC. If you wanted to add a DAC, or upgrade the ADC, you would replace the entire board! The FMC innovation provided developers with choice, so that they could select the right FPGA for their specific I/O requirements. [Read More]

Enabling VADJ on Versal VCK190 and VMK180

Posted on March 21, 2024 | Jeff Johnson

Important This workaround is applicable to the VCK190, VMK180 and VPK120 because they all use the same circuitry for generating the VADJ voltage: an IR38164 buck regulator with the same I2C address (0x1E), connecting to the same port of the same I2C switch (address 0x74, port 0) and connecting to the same I2C pins of the Versal device (PMC MIO46/47). Note that this workaround is NOT applicable to the VEK280 because that board applies a fixed VADJ voltage of 1. [Read More]

Comprehensive list of FPGA development boards

Posted on October 17, 2022 | Jeff Johnson

Update 2022-10-19: I’m aware that I have some work to do to get the boards from Intel, Lattice, Efinix and other FPGA vendors into these lists. All I can say is that I’m working on it! I also ended up with a lot of emails from people wanting to get certain dev boards added to the lists so I’ve made it easier for you (and me) to do that. If you have a board that you would like to list, please submit the details to me and I will put it up in a day or so. [Read More]