Reducing development time for industrial networking designers, Altera announced the expansion of its Industrial Networking Partner Program (INPP) with a new Industrial Networking Kit (INK) from Terasic. Designers can access the kit and Altera's industrial intellectual property (IP) partners in one place. Designers can choose the industrial networking IP that suits their system, knowing all the IP partners listed offer proven solutions and evaluation packages that work with Terasic's INK. The combination of Altera's INPP and the INK reduces development time by serving as a common development platform for embedded industrial designs.
The kit is a full-featured hardware platform based on the Terasic FPGA board with dual 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 128-MB SDRAM, 8-MB flash memory, 4-MB SRAM, security EEPROM, HSMC connector, GPIOs, toggle switches and LEDs along with USB, audio and video capabilities. The INK features a FPGA and supports industrial Ethernet and field bus networking standard enabling all IP vendors to support the latest generation of low-cost FPGAs. It is ideal for industrial automation and process control applications for servo/drive/motion-control equipment, sensors, programmable-logic controllers, machine vision and video surveillance equipment.
The plug-and-play usability of the INK can cut down development time by up to one year, depending on the complexity of the platform and how many products it supports. The kit can easily be expanded with HSMC and GPIO connectors to address a broad range of industrial applications.
Whether designers are looking to support single or multiple networking standards, Altera's expanded INPP is the place to start for industrial networking IP, reference designs, and support from Altera*s IP partners. All of the listed partners target the INK as the evaluation and development platform. This means developers can use one FPGA platform to support multiple networking standards, evaluate the networking solutions from different vendors, and develop the embedded industrial communications system required for their product.