Development Kits for PolarFire Based Single Board Computers

Development kits are important part of space C&DH projects during development phase specially when we are dealing with single board computers based on complex processors like PolarFire FPGA SoC. During hardware manufacturing, software development can be done in parallel to optimize procedures & save time. Depending on stage of development, Microchip Icicle kit, Video Kit, combination of FMC boards on Video kit or using standard OBCs without bespoke peripherals can be offered.

We offer any of above-mentioned options as development kit depending on stage of mission & timescale. The Microchip PolarFire SoC Video Kit itself does not natively provide RS-422, RS-485, SpaceWire or the OBC analogue front end. These interfaces require additional circuitry on an FMC mezzanine card.

For the DevKit, there are therefore two practical approaches:

Client can purchase the standard Microchip Icicle or Video Kit and develop its own FMC card for the required RS-422 / RS-485 / SpaceWire / analogue interfaces. In this case, CAVU would provide the applicable software package, BSP and drivers. In Some cases CAVU can provide the Video Kit together with FMC interface card, containing a limited number of representative serial/interface channels required for development. This is the configuration we had in mind for the DevKit item in our original offer. The FMC is a development aid rather than a replica of the final OBC Add-on Card, and we do not normally customise it on a programme-by-programme basis.

One important limitation is that the Video Kit does not reproduce the OBC storage architecture. In particular for case of OBC-Hyper-Polar, the dual 256 GiB eMMC, dual 512 Mib QSPI, MRAM and the associated OBC storage/boot implementation are not present in the same configuration. Therefore, depending on application, some software and storage-layer migration and re-verification may still be required when moving from the Video Kit to the EM.

When development schedule is quite compressed, we would actually recommend considering a standard OBC-HYPER-POLAR unit as the DevKit instead of the Video Kit. This gives software team the actual OBC processor, storage architecture, main-board interfaces and CAVU software environment from the beginning, significantly reducing the migration effort when the EM and final Add-on Card become available.

We can therefore support either approach, but for the fastest and lowest-risk software path, our preference would be to use an additional standard OBC-HYPER-POLAR as the development unit.

Icicle Kit

The rapid evolution of embedded computing is creating demand for processors that combine high-performance processing, deterministic real-time control, hardware acceleration, low power consumption and flexibility. Microchip Technology’s PolarFire SoC FPGA addresses these requirements by integrating a multi-core RISC-V processor subsystem with programmable FPGA fabric in a single device.

To help engineers evaluate this architecture, Microchip developed the PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit, a comprehensive development platform designed for software, FPGA and system-level development.

The Icicle Kit is a development and evaluation board built around Microchip’s MPFS250T PolarFire SoC FPGA. The device combines a five-core RISC-V processor subsystem with programmable PolarFire FPGA logic.

The current production Icicle Kit incorporates:

• 1 × E51 RISC-V monitor core
• 4 × U54 RISC-V application cores
• PolarFire FPGA fabric
• 2 GB LPDDR4 memory
• 8 GB eMMC storage
• SD-card interface
• PCIe Gen2 capability
• Gigabit Ethernet
• USB
• CAN
• SPI, I²C and UART
• mikroBUS expansion
• Raspberry Pi-compatible expansion header
• Integrated programming/debug capability

This combination allows developers to divide an application between software running on the RISC-V processor subsystem and hardware functions implemented in the FPGA fabric.

Microchip Video Kit

The PolarFire SoC Video Kit (MPFS250-VIDEO-KIT) takes the same fundamental RISC-V + FPGA architecture and focuses it specifically on vision and video processing.

Microchip describes it as a full-featured embedded-vision development platform for secure, reliable and power-efficient edge-vision applications. It also supports Microchip’s VectorBlox Accelerator SDK and neural-network IP for AI/ML applications.

The most important difference is the board’s extensive native imaging connectivity.

The Video Kit supports:

• Dual 4K MIPI CSI-2 camera inputs
• HDMI 2.0 input
• HDMI 2.0 output
• MIPI DSI
• USB 3.1 Gen 1/Gen 2
• PCIe Gen2 ×4
• Gigabit Ethernet
• CAN-FD
• SD card
• eMMC
• mikroBUS
• FMC expansion

It also comes with a dual-camera module using Sony IMX334 image sensors, allowing developers to begin working with real camera data immediately. The board uses the MPFS250TS PolarFire SoC, with four U54 application cores and an E51 monitor core, alongside the FPGA fabric.

Both Icicle & video kit platforms exploit the PolarFire SoC’s combination of RISC-V processing and FPGA logic. The difference is the system around the processor. The Icicle Kit essentially asks: “What can I build with a PolarFire SoC?” & The Video Kit asks: “What can I build with a PolarFire SoC for cameras, imaging, video and AI?”

With the Icicle Kit, engineers may need to develop or connect additional hardware for a camera-based application. With the Video Kit, much of the imaging infrastructure is already provided.

Items package list for OBC-EM includes everything required for development like harness, programmer, software package in CAVU GitLab & migration from DevKit to actual computer is minimum path.