
Spartan-3E FPGA Starter Kit Board User Guide www.xilinx.com 13
UG230 (v1.2) January 20, 2011
Design Trade-Offs
Design Trade-Offs
A few system-level design trade-offs were required in order to provide the Spartan-3E
Starter Kit board with the most functionality.
Configuration Methods Galore!
A typical FPGA application uses a single non-volatile memory to store configuration
images. To demonstrate new Spartan-3E FPGA capabilities, the starter kit board has three
different configuration memory sources that all need to function well together. The extra
configuration functions make the starter kit board more complex than typical Spartan-3E
FPGA applications.
The starter kit board also includes an on-board USB-based JTAG programming interface.
The on-chip circuitry simplifies the device programming experience. In typical
applications, the JTAG programming hardware resides off-board or in a separate
programming module, such as the Xilinx Platform USB cable.
Voltages for all Applications
The Spartan-3E Starter Kit board showcases a triple-output regulator developed by Texas
Instruments, the TPS75003
specifically to power Spartan-3 and Spartan-3E FPGAs. This
regulator is sufficient for most stand-alone FPGA applications. However, the starter kit
board includes DDR SDRAM, which requires its own high-current supply. Similarly, the
USB-based JTAG download solution requires a separate 1.8V supply.
Related Resources
• Xilinx MicroBlaze Soft Processor
http://www.xilinx.com/microblaze
• Xilinx PicoBlaze Soft Processor
http://www.xilinx.com/picoblaze
• Xilinx Embedded Development Kit
http://www.xilinx.com/tools/platform.htm
• Xilinx software tutorials
http://www.xilinx.com/support/techsup/tutorials/
• Texas Instruments TPS75003
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/tps75003.html
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