DSX50WZ Spartan-3 + Fast Network Board

The DSX50WZ board combines Xilinx's XC3S50AN Spartan-3AN FPGA and WIZnet W5300 Hardwired Network Protocol Ethernet Controller. When your project calls for Ethernet interface it gives you a head start in your embedded project design process. This small factor board may be configured as a very efficient web server and still has most of the XC3S50 FPGA resources available for your application. Just imagine the possibilities of having an Internet Appliance with power consumption less then 1Watt and capable of effectively serving rich web pages with performance on par with "big" servers. Not to mention at the same time having ~33k gates available for your application.

The W5300 Ethernet Controller makes complex task of TCP/IP packet processing and serving web pages no more difficult than working with UART. If you are starting a new project with FPGA connected to Ethernet, want to learn FPGA and PicoBlaze programming or just need a web server/network connection for your "older design" it is the perfect board for you.

 

Feature	Description
FPGA	Spartan-3 XC3S50AN from Xilinx 50k system gates, 1,584 Logic Cells, 1,408 CLB Flip-Flops 54k bits of Block RAM bits in 3 blocks 627k bits of User Flash 2 Digital Clock Managers
Ethernet	W5300 from WIZnet Hardwired TCP/IP Protocols: TCP, UDP, ICMP, Ipv4,    ARP, IGMPv2, PPPoE Ethernet 8 independent SOCKETs simultaneously Internal 128k bytes memory for RX /TX buffers Embedded 10BaseT/100BaseT Ethernet PHY
Miscellaneous	50.000 MHz clock generator with extremely low jitter, frequency    resolution to six decimal places and stabilities +/- 20 PPM 1k bit UNI/O EEPROM for storing MAC and IP address MAX3232 RS232 driver 2 LEDs PicoBlaze soft processor core from Xilinx running with 100MHz clock
Power	Power Supply 3.5 - 6.0 VDC Power consumption under 1Watt On board high efficiency switching step down converter TPS65053 W5300 power switchable under XC3S50 control
Connectors	RJ45 Ethernet DSUB-9 for RS232 3 pin header for power supply optional three 24 pin headers/sockets (0.1 spacing) optional micro SD card connector
Dimensions	3.7" x 1.5" (94 x 38 mm)

 

Unique for this board is that W5300, EEPROM, RS232 and SD card are connected to Bank 3 of FPGA leaving Bank 0, Bank 1 and Bank 2 available for user application. There are 53 pins routed to headers, most of them are routed as a differential pairs.

Software examples

This board is shipped preprogrammed with our demo web server software/hardware. Server runs on PicoBlaze microprocessor and is capable of serving selected pages of our web site including this one. When accessed by Chrome browser this very page is served in ~50ms. Web pages in compressed format are stored in internal flash of Spartan3AN. One of the demo pages shows how to access FPGA logic using "XMLHttpRequest" function and java script. Demo comes as a complete working Xilinx ISE WebPACK 10.1 project with all sources and takes less than 33% of FPGA resources. We also included our "SiteBuilder" Tcl/Tk application for converting web pages into a format loadable into FPGA internal flash.

Development Environment

Xilinx free ISE® WebPACK™ software is the ideal downloadable solution for FPGA and CPLD design offering HDL synthesis and simulation, implementation, device fitting, and JTAG programming all of it free. Xilinx has created a solution that allows convenient productivity by providing a design solution that is always up to date with error-free downloading and single file installation. You only need to buy a programming cable. For development we recommend "Platform Cable USB II".