NanoBoard 3000 - Motherboard Resources
Related articles: Functional Overview of the NanoBoard 3000, Key Features of the NanoBoard 3000
Each of Altium's 3000-series NanoBoards is a 242 x 176mm (9.5" x 6.9") six layer printed circuit board (4 x signal, 2 x plane), powered by an external 5 Volt regulated supply. One of the plane layers is used predominantly as a grounding plane (GND, AGND, AUGND, SHIELD), but incorporates split regions to accomodate 1.2V, 1.8V and 2.5V supplies. The other plane is used primarily for 5V and 3.3V supplies. Both top and bottom of the board are used for component placement.
For each variant in the NanoBoard 3000 series, the layout of the motherboard and available resources are the same – all that differs are the physical devices used for the Host (NanoTalk) Controller and the target User FPGA.
Physical layout of a 3000-series NanoBoard.
The motherboard features a variety of resources, many of which are made available to the on-board User FPGA. There are also a number of system resources, that are not accessible from the User FPGA device, but are available to the user in various situations – such as audio-related connectors and resources for powering the board. Some system resources are only used by the motherboard itself, such as memory devices used by the firmware running in the board's Host Controller FPGA device (NanoTalk Controller).
Additional resources are available to the on-board User FPGA device, located on dedicated satellite extension boards that plug-in to the motherboard. These are referred to as peripheral boards. The motherboard has provision for the attachment of one such board.
Note: For each resource, reference is made to the corresponding sheet(s) of the motherboard schematics on which the circuitry of interest can be found. For a pdf document of these schematics, use the relevant link below for the particular NanoBoard 3000 series variant you are using. A link to the zipped reference design – from which the corresponding variant is manufactured – is also provided.
| NB3000XN (Xilinx Variant) | NB3000AL (Altera Variant) | NB3000LC (Lattice Variant) NanoBoard 3000LC Schematics Coming Soon! |
Resources Accessible from an FPGA Design
The NanoBoard 3000 motherboard has a variety of resources individually wired to I/O pins of the on-board User FPGA. These allow a wide variety of embedded examples to be executed on the board, in addition to providing a base for developing new applications.
The following linked pages detail those resources on the motherboard that can be accessed from, and used within, a design targeted to the on-board User FPGA device:
System Resources
The following linked pages detail those resources on the motherboard that can not be accessed from, and used within, a design targeted to the on-board User FPGA device: