General-purpose test instruments consist of products such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, signal generators, video test equipment, automotive test equipment, and many more. These products are used across multiple applications in environments ranging from labs to manufacturing facilities.
Programmable logic continues to play an important role in general-purpose test instrument development. FPGA flexibility and scalability accelerates time-to-market and reduces risk. This, coupled with the rapid advances in integration capability, have made programmable logic the new centerpiece of both hardware and software development teams.
In addition to the use of programmable logic, numerous new circuit structures are emerging as performance requirements and circuit densities increase. Significant use of new buses, often involving high-speed serial data transfer, and the commonplace use of system-on-chip (SOC) and system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) devices have pervaded in the industry. Now designers must deal with very complex design and circuit structures, making in-circuit debug harder and, at the same time, even more necessary. Figure 1 shows high-speed capture, analysis, and processing for online measurements in typical video test equipment.
Figure 1. Typcial FPGA Usage in Video Test Equipment
Altera Solutions
The feature-rich architecture of the Altera® Stratix® II, Stratix, Stratix GX, Stratix II GX, Cyclone™ II, and Cyclone FPGA families provides an excellent solution for general-purpose test insturment and equipment production. These programmable device families give system designers the flexibility, performance, integration, and design resources that are not available in any other device solution. These silicon products, combined with Altera’s extensive portfolio of intellectual property (IP) cores provide designers with industry-leading solutions for the development of the next generation of general-purpose test instruments and equipment.
The Stratix II and Stratix device families use a high-performance architecture that accelerates block-based designs for maximum system performance. Stratix devices include up to 200K equivalent logic elements (LEs), up to 10-Mbits of embedded TriMatrix™ memory, digital signal processing (DSP) blocks with up to 384 18x18 high-performance multipliers and flexible I/O for most popular interface standards.
The Stratix GX device familes includes up to 20 full-duplex transceiver channels supporting up to 6.5 Gbps with the accuracy required for multiple serial protocols such as PCI Express 1.1 and 2.0 versions. The inclusion of the transceivers provides a solution that is both cost- and board-space-efficient for general-purpose tester products. Built on the Stratix architecture, the Stratix GX devices include the TriMatrix memory and LE resources needed for input and output data processing functions, such as framing, bit-error rate testing, and clock signal synchronization.
The Cyclone FPGA series of high-density, low-cost devices are a precise fit for applications that need a lower price per signal. Cyclone devices can be used in conjunction with Altera IP cores, such as the Nios® II embedded processor to implement control functions that significantly shorten design time. This embedded IP can shorten development cycles, lower costs and yield faster time-to-market. The integration of various peripherals into a single Cyclone series device reduces the number of discrete components on boards, along with the related design costs and time, leading to significant cost savings. With a highly efficient device architecture, Cyclone series devices meet the performance and integration needs of general purpose test products.
Altera offers a variety of IP cores that can be utilized in tester equipment. Chip-to-chip interfaces such as SFI, SPI3, SPI4.x, SGMII, and XAUI and memory interfaces such as DDR2 and RLDRAM II can be downloaded from Altera's IP MegaStoreTM website.
Related Links
| Table 1. Intellectual Property, Development Kits & Reference Designs | |
| Digital Signal Processing | Embedded Processors |
|---|---|
| Interfaces & Peripherals | Communications |
