Development platform speeds design and prototyping of display-based applications

Arrow's PABLO baseboard provides the key components, interfaces and power-supply infrastructure for evaluation and prototyping. At the heart of this baseboard is the image-processing core, which combines a cost-effective Altera Cyclone II FPGA with two fully independent 32-bit wide mobile DDR SDRAM memories. The baseboard's communications options include UART, SPI and I²C connectivity as well as user-defined I/Os. LEDs, a touch digitiser, several pushbuttons and a joystick are also provided. The board can be ordered with an optional USB Blaster compliant FPGA configuration cable.

Each PABLO platform is delivered with a design example that has been used to verify hardware functionality and that will allow users to quickly begin developing their own application. The examples include modules for TFT and timing controllers, mobile DDR SDRAM controllers, and miscellaneous inverter and display control functions.

To further simplify design and development, the PABLO baseboard can be used in conjunction with Arrow's PABLO cross adapters. These adapters provide a convenient way to interface to supported displays from Hitachi, NEC and Sharp using either LVDS or 18-bit RGB interfaces. The cross adapters also deliver the connectors needed to supply CFL inverter circuitry or power supplies for LED backlighting. Depending on the adapter chosen, touch interface functionality is also available.

The flexibility and functionality of the PABLO baseboard is further extended through ‘add-on' cards that comply with Altera's ‘Santa Cruz' standard. The PABLO baseboard can accommodate up to two such cards, which can be used to provide a range of video, image processing and other functionality optimised for the target application.

Currently Arrow's range of PABLO add-on cards includes options that deliver composite video input, Ethernet and DVI input. Each add-on card comes with its own design examples.

All of the PABLO hardware has been designed by Arrow’s European reference board engineering team with support from key suppliers and design partners. Design examples employed in PABLO products feature IP cores from MaCo-Engineering and RevisionOne Engineering, in addition to reference designs and IP from Altera and Altera’s Megafunction Partner Program.