The GR740-MINI evaluation board is a compact evaluation platform designed to showcase the capabilities of the GR740 quad-core LEON4FT SoC and the CertusPro-NX FPGA.

Capabilities

• Small form factor (7x9.5 cm)
• GR740 quad-core LEON4FT SPARC V8 Processor
• CertusPro-NX FPGA
• USB-C connector for debug and power
• FMC+ connector
• 2x Ethernet RJ45 connectors

Memory and I/O

• GR740 quad-core processor
  • USB-C: JTAG and UART
  • 1 x Ethernet to RJ45
  • FMC+: 4 x SpaceWire
  • 256MB SDRAM
  • 128MB FLASH
• CertusPro-NX FPGA
  • USB-C: UART and JTAG
  • 1 x Ethernet to RJ45
  • FMC+: 4 x SerDes, 23x LVDS pairs, 30 3V I/Os
  • 1GB DDR3
  • 512Mb SPI FLASH

GR740

The GR740 is a rad-hard system-on-chip featuring a quad-core fault-tolerant LEON4 SPARC V8 processor, eight port SpaceWire router, PCI initiator/target interface, and 10/100/1000 Mbit Ethernet interfaces. The GR740 device is targeted at high-performance general-purpose processing. The software ecosystem available for the GR740 is described here.

CertusPro-NX FPGA

The GR740-MINI board is equipped with the CertusPro-NX FPGA, which is the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) variant of the radiation-tolerant CertusPro-NX-RT FPGA.

Frontgrade provides the Certus/Pro™-NX-RT FPGAs, engineered for space missions, featuring SnPb solder ball leads, and produced from single, traceable wafer lots that have successfully passed radiation acceptance testing. These compact and energy-efficient FPGAs offer 96K logical cells, 7.3Mb of on-die memory, and wideband interfaces.

Using the board

The GR740 and the CertusPro FPGA can be monitored and controlled through the GRMON3 debugger (evaluation version). GRMON3 should also be used to program the configuration memory of the FPGA. We also provide example bitfiles for the FPGA, documented in the boards's Quick Start Guide.

The Lattice Radiant software can be used to develop FPGA applications. Support for the CertusPro FPGA is enabled also in the evaluation version of Radiant.

The open source (GPL) version of the GRLIB IP library supports the Lattice Certus FPGAs.  An FPGA template design for the GR740-MINI board is freely available and provides a reliable starting point for customization and optimization, enabling designers to concentrate on the unique aspects of their SoC design.  See www.gaisler.com/grlib for further information.

GR740-MINI FPGA example bitfiles

gr740-mini-ex.zip

GR740-MINI FPGA pdc file

gr740-mini-board.pdc

GR740 PROM example

gr740-mini-example-prom.zip

GRMON3 debugger

GRMON3 download

Lattice Radiant FPGA development software

Lattice Radiant

GR740-MINI User’s Manual

GR740-MINI-UM.pdf (October 2023)

GR740-MINI Quick Start Guide

GR740-MINI-QSG.pdf (November 2023)