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Advanced platform delivers FPGA-based display solutions

Evaluation board offers support for Lattice ECP2 devices to 50KLUTs

Arrow has further expanded its range of advanced development platforms with the launch of a new evaluation board for designers looking to develop FPGA-based display applications. Developed by Arrow's European reference board team and design partner Axor International, the EasyLCD Evaluation Board is based around the low-cost Lattice ECP2 architecture.

Easily integrated with third party and custom IP, the EasyLCD is a configurable FPGA video system that can accommodate Lattice ECP2 FPGAs offering from 12 KLUTs to 50 KLUTS in package sizes up to 484BGA. The Lattice ECP2 family of FPGA devices has been optimised to deliver high performance features in an economical FPGA fabric. The devices include Look-Up Table (LUT)-based logic, distributed and embedded memory, Phase Locked Loops (PLLs), Delay Locked Loops (DLLs), pre-engineered source synchronous I/O support, enhanced sysDSP blocks and advanced configuration support.

In addition to the Lattice device, each evaluation board features 64Mbyte of DDRAM video memory and a powerful 16bpp LCD video controller that can be configured for resolutions from QVGA to high definition in 4:3 and 16:9 formats. EasyLCD supports composite video and analogue VGA input and will accept realtime video input streams.

Designed to provide comprehensive graphic processing functionality, the EasyLCD platform incorporates a 2D graphics accelerator and can handle picture scaling and cropping of realtime video. An I²C interface facilitates 'plug-and-play' LCD connectivity while a backlight inverter offers ON/OFF and dimming control.

The platform offers four-wire analogue resistive touch screen input and can be expanded through the addition of SRAM and Flash memory. A high-speed USB 2.0 interface operating at 480Mbps ensures the rapid transfer of graphics images as well as speeding system programming.

All of the EasyLCD hardware has been designed by Arrow's European reference board engineering team with support from its design partner.

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