Altium announces new NanoBoard-NB2

Altium's NanoBoard-NB2 provides developers with a highly re-configurable and extendable hardware platform on which to implement and interactively debug embedded designs targeted to a wide range of processor and FPGA architectures. The NanoBoard architecture allows engineers to fully exploit the hardware/software co-design capabilities of Altium Designer, industry's first unified electronic product development system that brings together board-level design, FPGA design and embedded software development. The Altium Designer system allows engineers to take a new approach to system design by seamlessly combining software, processors, and FPGA hardware and the embedding of 'intelligence' into their applications.

Altium unveiled an early prototype of the NanoBoard-NB2 to great interest at last years' Embedded Systems Conference, Silicon Valley, San Jose. Since that time Altium has further refined the design to make the NanoBoard-NB2 even more feature-rich, versatile and easy to use, and to ensure it perfectly complements the latest version of Altium Designer. A dramatically enhanced audio subsystem, an SD card reader, USB connectivity, infrared remote control capability and a re-designed daughter board to support a much larger number of IO connections from the target FPGA to the connected peripherals are just some of the enhancements that have been made.

Creating a development board that harnesses the opportunities offered by the latest programmable device technologies has been the primary driver for the development of the NanoBoard-NB2. This 'LiveDesign' system provides engineers with a real-time development environment and is aimed at making it easy to design and build leading-edge electronic products commented Nick Martin, Altium founder and CEO. With both Altium Designer and the
NanoBoard-NB2 we have pioneered concepts, features and functionality that have never been seen in an electronic product development system until this time. The NanoBoard architecture itself is a groundbreaking design and the
NanoBoard-NB2 goes even further to unlock the potential of 'soft' design for electronics designers so they can create and build applications that are only limited by their own imagination.

The NanoBoard-NB2's support for plug-in daughter boards and now new swappable peripheral boards provides engineers with a 'future-proofed'
electronics development system. As new processors, FPGAs and peripheral devices become available, engineers will not have to switch to a new development system in order to experiment with them, as is the case with fixed, single-target development boards.

At its initial release, three daughter boards will be available for the NanoBoard-NB2. Customers can choose between an Altera® Cyclone II, a LatticeECP, or a Xilinx®-Spartan -3 FPGA device daughter board when they purchase. The NanoBoard-NB2 daughter boards are backwards compatible with the NanoBoard-NB1. The NanoBoard-NB2 can also be daisy-chained together with the NanoBoard-NB1 or multiple NanoBoard-NB2s for the development of complex systems comprising of multiple FPGA devices spread across multiple PCBs.

The NanoBoard-NB2 will also supply as standard three plug-in peripheral boards - an audio/video connector board, a compact flash/ATA/SD card board, and communications board containing USB, IrDA and Ethernet connectivity.

Since demonstrating early prototypes at ESC last year, we've been working hard on strengthening the concepts that underpin the NanoBoard-NB2 and its links to Altium Designer, our unified electronics design system, continued Nick Martin. We've had a great response to Altium Designer from electronic designers around the world and we are seeing solid traction with the systems' uptake throughout the industry. There has been a lot of interest in this latest-generation NanoBoard, and I'm sure there will be plenty of excitement at what we have achieved.

Visitors attending Embedded World, Nürnberg, will be able to interact live with the NanoBoard-NB2 at the Altium booth 11-236 on the exhibition centre show floor.

Pricing and availability
Altium will commence taking advanced orders for the NanoBoard-NB2 from today. The price for the Altium NanoBoard-NB2 will be EUR 2,495.