Altera Cyclone III Development Board - Manual (Page 5)

© March 2009 Altera Corporation Cyclone III 3C120 Development Board Reference Manual
1. Overview
Introduction
This document describes the hardware features of the Cyclone ® III development
board, including detailed pin-out information to enable you to create custom FPGA
designs that interface with all components of the board.
f For information about setting up and powering up the Cyclone III development
board and using the kit’s demo software, refer to the
Cyclone III Development Kit User
Guide .
General Description
The Cyclone ® III development board provides a hardware platform for developing
and prototyping low-power, high-volume, and feature-rich designs as well as to
demonstrate the Cyclone III device’s on-chip memory, embedded multipliers, and the
Nios
® II embedded processor.
With up to 4 Mbits of embedded memory and 288 embedded 18-bit × 18-bit
multipliers, the Cyclone III device supplies internal memory while also providing
external support for high-speed, low-latency memory access via dual-channel DDR
SDRAM and low-power SRAM.
Built on TSMC’s 65-nm low-power process technology, Cyclone III devices are
designed to provide low static and dynamic power consumption. Additionally, with
the support of the Quartus
® II software’s PowerPlay technology, designs are
automatically optimized for power consumption. Therefore, the Cyclone III
development board provides a power-optimized, integrated solution for
memory-intensive, high-volume applications.
Accordingly, the Cyclone III development board is especially suitable for wireless,
video and image processing, and other high-bandwidth, parallel processing
applications. Through the use of Altera
® -provided video and image intellectual
property (or other MegaCore ® functions) and board expansion connectors, you can
enable the inter-operability of the Cyclone III device, allowing application-specific
customization of the development board.
f For more information about the Altera Video and Image Processing Suite MegaCore
functions, refer to the
Video and Image Processing Suite User Guide .
To get you started, Altera provides application-specific design examples. The
pre-built and tested design examples allow you to:
■ Create a Cyclone III FPGA design in an hour
■ View Cyclone III FPGA power measurement examples
■ Design a 32-bit soft processor system inside the Cyclone III FPGA in an hour