EP2C8Q208C8N board & development kit | pinout

EP2C8Q208C8N Pinout Equivalent

EP2C8Q208C8N is a very classic programmable logic device belonging to the Intel Cyclone II series FPGA, packaged in a 208-pin QFP package (model suffix Q208). The main advantages are low power consumption, high cost performance (the official word is suitable for cost-sensitive users) and rich peripheral resources, mainly due to industrial control, military equipment and embedded systems. This article will analyze the FPGA chip in terms of pin definition and selection of alternative products.

ep2c8q208c8n Core parameters and pin definition:

Pin definition
Power supply configuration: The core voltage is 1.15V~1.25V, all I/O voltages support 1.2V~3.3V, with multiple sets of independent power pins.
I/O resources: 138 user-programmable I/ OS, which can be reused as LVDS, PCI, DDR2 and other interfaces.
Configuration interface: Support JTAG, AS (active serial) mode, but need nCONFIG pin external 10kΩ pull-up resistor.
Core parameters:
Logical unit (LE) : 8,256.
Storage resources: 162kb of embedded RAM.
Clock management: Built-in 4 PLL, can provide high precision clock signal.

Alternative product analysis:

1 Product replacement of the same series:

EP2C5Q208C8N: slightly less available resources; 4,608LE, other features are basically the same. If EP2C8Q208C8N is used, you can consider using this replacement.

EP2C5Q208C8N

EP2C20Q240C8N: indicates an upgrade version, with available resources higher than EP2C8Q208C8N. 18,752LE, suitable for more complex designs requiring more resources, can directly replace EP2C8Q208C8N.

EP2C20Q240C8N

2 Cross-series alternatives
Intel’s FPGA product line consists of five main series, according to the performance from high to low are Agilex, Stratix, Arria, Max, Cyclon; Cyclone and Max are widely used in industrial scenarios due to their stable performance and cheap price. If you need to use different series of products to replace, the first thing to pay attention to is whether the resources of the replacement product are enough, generally speaking, the replacement of the upgrade is basically feasible, and the replacement of the downgrade requires engineers to analyze the resources to see whether it can be replaced. Two options are given in this paper: Cyclone III EP3C25Q240C8N (triple performance improvement, pay attention to the need to upgrade the tool chain) and Cyclone IV EP4CE10F17C8N (sufficient resources but the package needs to be modified).

Cyclone III EP3C25Q240C8N

Cyclone IV EP4CE10F17C8N

3. Foreign alternatives
With the development of The Times and the progress of technology, there are also many Chinese manufacturers to design and develop the FPGA industry, such as Unigroup Tongchuang and Anlu Technology. However, at present, China’s FPGA manufacturers are not well adapted, so they have not been widely used, and the performance will be slightly lower than the two old manufacturers (Intel and Xilinx). Therefore, foreign alternatives are generally not recommended.