Simplifying FPGA development for AI and image processing

Mouser Electronics is now stocking the Hello FPGA Kit from Microchip. 

The kit is an entry-level platform developed for end users with low to medium experience with field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). 

The Hello FPGA Kit supports artificial intelligence (AI) and digital signal processing prototypes and includes a power monitor GUI that allows developers to measure FPGA core power consumption while running designs. 

The kit is suitable for the development of a broad range of solutions, including communications, industrial, aviation, medical, and defence applications. 

The Microchip Hello FPGA Kit, available from Mouser Electronics, includes the FPGA mainboard, a camera sensor board, LCD board, and required USB cable. The FPGA mainboard is based on the SmartFusion2 system-on-chip (SoC) FPGA. 

The low-power SmartFusion2 device combines FPGA fabric with a 166-MHz Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller subsystem that includes 256 Kbytes of embedded flash, extensive peripherals, instruction cache, and Embedded Trace Macrocell. 

The FPGA mainboard also includes a Microchip PIC32MX7 microcontroller – which controls the SmartFusion2 SoC, monitors power, and more – as well as Arduino and Mikroe mikroBUS connectors to offer flexibility for prototyping and expansion. 

The kit can work as a standalone unit as well as an extension to existing Microchip kits over the PICkit Header.