Altium's reconfigurable hardware platform – the NanoBoard – is now even more flexible with an expanded range of plug-in peripheral boards and programmable device daughter boards.
This adds to the range of target devices and peripheral functionality already available for the NanoBoard, providing more options for you to create device intelligence without being constrained by having to choose a final programmable device or peripheral hardware before the design process begins.
Following the recently released plug-in daughter board hosting a Xilinx® Virtex™-4 high-performance FPGA, four new daughter boards have been released that support the following programmable devices:
• Xilinx® Virtex™-5 (more information)
• Xilinx Spartan™-3AN (more information)
• Xilinx Spartan™-3A DSP (more information)
• Actel® ProASIC3 (more information)
Five new peripheral boards have also been released. These add to the Compact flash/ATA/SD board, USB/IrDA/Ethernet board and double-sized VGA/Composite/S-Video board that come standard with the Desktop NanoBoard. The new boards are:
• A 6-channel, single-sized, multi-network interface power control and monitoring board
• A 12-channel, double-sized, multi-network interface power control and monitoring board
• An audio/video board targeted at AV connectivity with Apple-compatible VGA-style interface, iPod-compatible AV ports, and composite video in/out
• A quad-band GSM and GPS board
• A Bluetooth, Zigbee and 802.11 wireless board.
This extended range of programmable devices and peripheral functionality significantly expands your options as a designer. They allow you to experiment with a wider set of deployment options and explore a much greater range of design possibilities before committing to final hardware.
For example, you may choose to create your embedded design using one daughter board but consider deploying the design on an (perhaps lower-cost) alternative. The NanoBoard lets you directly compare the performance measurements between different daughter boards, on the fly.
More information on the NanoBoard
More information on Altium Designer
