OPENSPARC Compatible Boards

[Piyumal]

Hi,

I'm quite new to this forum. I'm a student hoping to work on OPENSPARC for my reserch. But unfortunately Diligents OPENSPARC virtex 5 and Xilinix XUP boards are already retired. Does anyone know another compatible board with stock availability or if someone knows where to buy a secondhand/resold board it would be a great help indeed. 

Thanks in Advance!

Piyumal,

[D@n]

It looks like the OpenSPARC board has been "retired", and is no longer sold or supported.  While the Digilent staff here might have another one or two lying around and available for purchase, wouldn't it make more sense to upgrade to a newer architecture?

I guess the real question is whether or not you wish to get the last generation of OpenSPARC running again, or alternatively whether or not you wish to be a part of providing the OpenSPARC platform to a new generation.  

If you wish to pursue this into a new generation, then may I commend the NetFPGA to your attention?  It's based upon the newer 7-series architecture, the (cheaper?) Kintex-7, will use Vivado instead of ISE, and has over 200k LUTs. (That should be enough to implement what was once a 50k LUT project.) I'd also like to commend to your attention the s1_core project on OpenCores? According to James Brakefield's work, it compiles to roughly 53k LUTs with Vivado.  As a result, you might even find that a better starting point for any work you might wish to do with the NetFPGA.

Yours,

Dan

 

[Piyumal]

Thanks a lot for your valuable information Dan, I started studying on the S1_core. NetFPGA is indeed a good option but due lack of budget in my project and my lack of experience with FPGA Tools I find it really hard to work on netFPGA. But I hope to give it a try if I manage to get hold of one FPGA.

Thanks indeed!!

& Best Regards,

Piyumal