Sipeed Tang Primer 20K Development Board

Sipeed Tang Primer 20K GOWIN GW2A FPGA Development Board

 

1. Introduction

Tang Primer 20K is a core board with DDR3 sodimm shape based on GW2A-LV18PG256C8/I7 as the main chip, with 2 ext-boards are prepared, the Dock and the Lite.

 

2. Parameters

Item	Parameter	Addition
FPGA Chip	GW2A-LV18PG256C8/I7	Logic units(LUT4) 20736 Flip-Flop(FF) 15552 Shadow SRAM S-SRAM(bits) 41472 Block SRAM B-SRAM(bits) 828K Number of B-SRAM 46 18x18 Multiplier 48 PLLs 4 I/O Bank 8
Memory	128M DDR3
Flash	32Mbits NOR Flash	Read burn Flash
Debugger	Jtag + Uart	JST SH1.0 8Pins connector
SD card slot	1	Push-pull type
Display	8Pins spi lcd connector
Package	204P DDR3
Avaliable IO	117

3. Comparison between ext-board

3.1. Dock ext-board appearance

The corresponding pins numbering of LED2 and LED3 is N16 and N14. See the mark on left of the right picture.

3.2. Lite ext-board appearance

The corresponding pin numbering between R8 and P9 is P8. See the mark on the top left of the right picture.

3.3. Comparison between peripherals of ext-board

Item		Dock		Lite
		Number	Addition	Number
RGB Interface		1	RGB565 40P FPC Connector
DVP Interface		1	24P FPC Connector
Mic array Interface		1	10P FPC Connector
Touch Interface		1	4P FPC Connector
PMOD Interface		4		4
3.5mm headphone Jack		1	LPA4809MSF driver
DIP switch		1	5P DIP switch
Slide switch		1	Switch USB function	2
Type-C	USB-JTAG&UART	1	Onboard BL702 used to download bitstream file and provide serial communication
	User-defined USB	1	USB3317 with Slide switch to change USB Interface function
Wireless antenna		1	BL702 wireless function
Key		6	One used for burning BL702, five for Users	2
LED		6
HDMI Interface		1
Ethernet Interface		1	RTL8201F
RGB LED		1	WS2812

8. Additional message

Sipeed Tang Primer 20K GOWIN GW2A FPGA Development Board's default bank voltage of bank 0、bank 1、bank 7 on the core board is 3.3V, so their bank IO voltage is 3.3V output. If you want to custom the input IO bank voltage, please remove R5 and R9, see Assembly Click me to see where is R5 and R9.

 

And the corresponding golden finger on core board are as following:

 

9. Questions

9.1. Dock ext-board not work

For Sipeed Tang Primer 20K Dock kits, it's necessary to enable the core board before using debugger debug the chip, just put the 1 switch on the dip switch down, otherwise LED0 and LED1 are on and core board dose not work.

Enable Core Board	Disable state	Additional comments
		When disabled, the LDE0 and LED1 is on, and core board doesn't work.

9.2. How to burn into flash

Do following configurations:

9.3. No reaction after burning or phenomenon is wrong

Make sure you hace selected right device, and all parameters are the same as following.

Then make sure your code logic is right and your

9.4. Successfully burned once, but can't burn after that

Note that the description is there was a successful Flash burnt one time.

In this case, the default reason is that the wrong Dual-Purpose pin is enabled and the debugger can no longer scan the FPGA's JTAG. You can short pin 1 and pin 4 of Flash, by which the chip cannot read FLASH normally when it is powered on.

 

Besides, if you have dock ext-board, this can be solved by the enable pin of dip switch.

Here are the steps:

 

First, enable the core board, put the 1 switch on the dip switch down, then do something (like burning FPGA or erasing FPGA) in Programmer application, when the progress bar shows, switch the 1 switch on the dip switch up and down, after which you will find the progress bar works and finish your operations on FPGA.

 

	Enable the core board first
	Do operation on board, when progress bar shows, switch the 1 switch on the dip switch up and down
	put the 1 switch on the dip switch up and down
	Progress bar works and finish your operations on fpga

 

We have 2 ext-board for Tang Primer 20K, the Dock and the Lite. Here I will tell the start of them.

 

1. Dock ext-board

1.1. Matters need attention

Here are matters need attention, to avoid spending much time dealing with trouble and fail at last.

 

1.1.1. Enable Core Board

For Sipeed Tang Primer 20K Dock kits, it's necessary to enable the core board before using debugger debug the chip, just put the 1 switch on the dip switch down, otherwise LED0 and LED1 are on and core board dose not work.

Enable Core Board	Disable state	Additional comments
		When disabled, the LDE0 and LED1 is on, and core board doesn't work.

 

1.1.2. Device not work

We have inserted the Core Board into Dock ext-board before delivery, but sometimes we need remove the Core board for some reasons, and after reinserting the Core Board into Dock ext-board, they don't work.

 

The correct connection steps is to insert the Core board into the ext-board at an Angle roughly as shown in the left figure below. Make sure that the Core board inserted diagonally from above is in uniform contact with the ext-board, which can be judged by the degree of uniformity of the exposed gold finger.

 

Then gently press the tilted end, you can hear a sound of the Core board being fixed by the ext-board slot.

 

If you find it difficult to press the tilted end, you can try to polish both sides of the Core board slightly to eliminate the size error caused by the production process.

 

Just polish the two sides of the red box in the figure above to reduce the difficulty of inserting.

 

1.1.3. Hardware version introduction

For Dock ext-board, we can know the version of our board from the mark in the following picture.

 

From the figure we can know the version of this board is V3708.

Here are their errors.

 

V3708

 

LED2 and LED3 are marked wrong, thay should be：

Name	Correct mask	Wrong mask
LED2	N16	B14
LED3	N14	N16

1.2. Start to use

For Dock ext-board, the following things can be done with default firmware.

• Press key S0, reset the RGB screen, camera, HDMI signal. And LED3, LED4, LED5 are on.
• Press key S0 to key S5, the state of LED0, lED1, LED2 changes.
• Connect OV5640 camera and 4.3 inch RGB screen with Dock ext-board (Make sure power is off while connecting), the screen display the picture captured by camera. If the screen displays not well, try to press key S0, this will synchronize the camera picture and screen content.

 

2. Lite ext-board

2.1. Hardware version introduction

For Lite ext-board，we can know the version of our board from the mark in the following picture.

 

From the figure we can know the version of this board is 3710.

For more information about Sipeed Tang Primer 20K, please contact us.