Starter kit opens gate to FPGA platforms

The Hello FPGA Kit from Microchip Technology supports artificial intelligence (AI) and digital signal processing prototypes and includes a power monitor GUI that allows developers to measure FPGA core power consumption while running designs. The kit is suitable for the development of a broad range of solutions, including communications, industrial, aviation, medical, and defence applications.

The kit includes the FPGA mainboard, a camera sensor board, LCD board, and required USB cable. The FPGA mainboard is based on the SmartFusion2 system-on-chip (SoC) FPGA.

This device combines FPGA fabric with a 166MHz Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller subsystem that includes 256Kbytes of embedded flash, extensive peripherals, instruction cache, and Embedded Trace Macrocell.

The FPGA mainboard also includes a Microchip PIC32MX7 microcontroller — which controls the SmartFusion2 SoC, monitors power, and more — as well as Arduino and Mikroe mikroBUS connectors to offer flexibility for prototyping and expansion.

The kit can work as a standalone unit as well as an extension to existing Microchip kits over the PICkit Header.