BittWare A10P3S | Altera Arria 10 GX/SX FPGA and SoC | 4x QSFP | 40 GBytes of DDR4 SDRAM with ECC | 2x PCIe x8 Gen1, Gen2, or Gen3
BittWare’s A10P3S is a 3/4-length PCIe x8 card based on the Altera Arria 10 GX/SX FPGA and SoC. The Arria 10 boasts high densities and a power-efficient FPGA fabric married with a rich feature set including high-speed transceivers up to 28 Gbps, hard floating-point DSP blocks, and embedded Gen3 PCIe x8. The Arria 10 SX variant also features a dual-core ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ hard processor system (HPS). The board offers flexible memory configurations supporting over 40 GBytes of memory, sophisticated clocking and timing options, and four front panel QSFP cages, each supporting up to 40 Gbps. The A10P3S also incorporates a Board Management Controller (BMC) for advanced system monitoring, which greatly simplifies platform management. All of these features combine to make the A10P3S ideal for a wide range of applications, including network processing, cyber security, compute and storage, instrumentation, broadcast, and Signals Intelligence.
Built on 20 nm process technology, the Arria 10 FPGAs feature industry-leading programmable logic that integrates a rich feature set of embedded peripherals, embedded high-speed transceivers, hard memory controllers, and protocol IP controllers. Variable-precision digital signal processing (DSP) blocks integrated with hardened floating point (IEEE 754-compliant) enable the Arria 10 to deliver floating-point performance of up to 1.5 TFLOPS. The FPGA supports Gen3 PCIe x8 via a hard IP block and provides up to 1150K equivalent LEs.
Development tools for OpenCL include Altera’s SDK for OpenCL and BittWare’s OpenCL Developer’s Bundle.
Intel Arria 10 GX Low Profile PCIe Board with Dual QSFP and DDR4
Altera Arria 10 GX FPGA
PCIe x8 interface supporting Gen1, Gen2, or Gen3
Dual QSFP cages for 2x 40GbE or 8x 10GbE
Memory: up to 32 GBytes of DDR4 SDRAM with ECC (x72)
Board Management Controller for Intelligent Platform Management
Precision clock and timing options
Utility I/O: USB 2.0
High-Speed Networking and I/O
The A10P3S provides a variety of interfaces for high-speed serial I/O as well as debug support. Four QSFP cages are available on the front panel, each supporting 40GbE or four 10GbE channels. The QSFP SerDes channels are connected directly to the Arria 10 FPGA, thus removing the latency of external PHYs. The QSFP cages can optionally be adapted for SFP+. Two Gen3 x8 PCIe interfaces connect to the FPGA via 16 SerDes lanes, allowing for a x8 PCIe connection in a standard slot or two x8 interfaces in a bifurcated slot. Two SerDes lanes are available via SATA connectors to connect external storage devices or provide direct board-to-board communication.
An Ethernet connector provides a 1000BASE-T connection to the SoC. A USB 2.0 interface is available for debug and programming support. The USB features a built-in Altera USB-Blaster and is connected to the Board Management Controller. A USB-to-serial port is also available to the FPGA. The board supports timestamping with provision for a 1 PPS and reference clock input.
Memory
The A10P3S features an extremely flexible memory configuration, with two SODIMM sites that support DDR4 SDRAM. Memory card options include the following: up to 16 GBytes of DDR4 with optional error-correcting codes (ECC). Additional on-board memory includes up to 8 GBytes DDR4 and 64 MBytes flash for FPGA images. Boards with the Arria 10 SX also feature a MicroSD connector with a MicroSD memory card that includes the ARM/SoC operating system and filesystem.
Board Management Controller
This boards‘s advanced system monitoring subsystem features a Board Management Controller (BMC), which accepts Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) messaging protocol commands.
The BMC features include control of power and resets, monitoring of board sensors, FPGA boot loader, voltage overrides, configuration of programmable clocks, access to I2C bus components, field upgrades, and IPMI messaging.
Access to the BMC is via PCIe or USB. BittWare’s BittWorks II Toolkit also provides utilities and libraries for communicating with the BMC components at a higher, more abstract level, allowing developers to remotely monitor the state of the board.
BittWorks II Toolkit
BittWare offers complete software support for this card with its BittWorks II software tools. The BittWorks II Toolkit serves as the main interface between the BittWare board and the host system. The Toolkit includes drivers, libraries, utilities, and example projects for accessing, integrating, and developing applications for the BittWare board.
FPGA Development Kit
BittWare’s FPGA DevKit provides FPGA board support IP and integration for BittWare’s Altera FPGA-based boards. The FDK includes FPGA components that provide preconfigured physical interfaces, infrastructure, and examples, drastically cutting development time and easily integrating into existing FPGA development environments.
Working example projects are available for each board which illustrate how to move data between the board’s different interfaces. Supported interfaces include DDR4, DDR3, DDR2, QDR2/+, PCIe, 10GbE, LVDS, SerDes, and Double Data Rate I/O. All example projects are available on BittWare’s Developer Site.
BittWare Firmware and Network Solutions Partners
BittWare offers firmware for the Arria 10 FPGA on the A10 family PCIe boards, targeted specifically for networking applications. BittWare’s FPGA framework provides a solid base for your application, including the following:
10GbE MAC
PCIe multi-channel DMA engines
DDR4 SDRAM and QDRII/II+ controllers
BittWare has also partnered with several companies to offer solutions for networking and financial acceleration:
Algo-Logic: Market feed handler and low latency gateway libraries, MAC, TOE
Argon Design: Design services specializing in multimedia and FPGA-based high performance trading
Atomic Rules: Custom IP development, example UDP, precision timestamping, PCIe, networking
Enyx: UOE, TOE, book building IP, order management IP, Market Feed Handler
A10P3S is a 3/4-length Gen3 PCIe x8 card with Intel Arria 10 GX/SX FPGA and SoC.BwMonitor is a part of the BittWorks II Toolkit: provides live board power and temperature display of BittWare hardware.PCIe FPGA Board Tour: A10P3S with Intel Arria 10.
