Stratix® Series FPGA I/O Connectivity

High-performance, high-density Stratix series FPGAs support a variety of differential and single-ended I/O standards, and easily interface with backplanes, host processors, buses, and memory devices. Table 1 shows the supported standards for each of the Stratix series families.

Table 1: I/O Standards Supported by Stratix Series FPGA Families

I/O Standard

Stratix IV (1)
(E, GX and GT)

Stratix III (2)
(E and L)

Stratix II (3)
(Including GX)

Stratix (4)
(Including GX)

Differential

 

LVDS

1.6 Gbps

1.6 Gbps

1.040 Gbps

840 Mbps

LVPECL

350 MHz

350 MHz

1.040 Gbps

840 Mbps

Differential HSTL

400 Mhz

400 Mhz

300 MHz

200 MHz

Differential SSTL

400 MHz

400 MHz

333 MHz

200 MHz

Single-Ended I/O

 

LVTTL

167 MHz

167 MHz

300 MHz

250 MHz

LVCMOS

167 MHz

167 MHz

300 MHz

250 MHz

SSTL-2
Class I and II

250 MHz

250 MHz

200 MHz

200 MHz

SSTL-15
Class I and II

533 MHz

533 MHz

    

SSTL-18
Class I and II

400 MHz

400 MHz

333 MHz

200 MHz

1.8-V/1.5-V/1.2-V HSTL

400 MHz

400 MHz

300 MHz

250 MHz

3.0-V PCI

66 MHz

66 MHz

66 MHz

66 MHz

3.0-V PCI-X 1.0

133 MHz

133 MHz

133 MHz

133 MHz
View all Show less

Notes

For more details, see:

  1. I/O Interfaces section of the Stratix IV (PDF) Handbook
  2. I/O Interfaces section of the Stratix III (PDF) Handbook
  3. I/O Standards section of the Stratix II (PDF) and Stratix II GX (PDF) Handbook
  4. I/O Standards section of the Stratix (PDF) and Stratix GX (PDF) Handbook

Stratix series FPGA I/O pins have the system-level performance and flexibility required to communicate with a multitude of devices. Intellectual property (IP) cores, and software tools such as Timing Analyzer, simultaneous switching noise (SSN) estimator, and pin planner all aid in ease of use and rapid integration.

Differential Signaling

Stratix series FPGA I/Os support high-performance, DC-coupled LVDS transmit and receive channels. In some families, each high-speed, side I/O LVDS pair has a hard dynamic phase alignment (DPA) block to eliminate clock-to-channel and channel-to-channel skew. Stratix series FPGA high-speed LVDS I/O pins support interface standards such as SPI-4.2, SFI-4, SGMII, Utopia IV, 10 GbE XSBI, the RapidIO® standard, and SerialLite.

Single-Ended I/O Support

The Stratix series FPGA single-ended I/O feature supports:

  • Programmable slew rate and drive strength
  • Dynamic trace compensation (variable delay chains for board trace mismatch compensation on both input and output signals)
  • Serial, parallel, and dynamic on-chip termination (OCT)

For more information about OCT see Termination Solutions in Stratix Series FPGAs.

High-Speed External Memory Interfaces

Stratix series FPGA I/O pins support existing and emerging external memory standards such as DDR, DDR2, DDR3, QDRII, QDRII+ and RLDRAMII at frequencies up to 400 MHz (see External Memory Interface Resources for Stratix Series FPGAs). A self-calibrating datapath takes advantage of the new I/O structure, dynamically adjusting itself to always provide the highest reliable frequency of operation across process, voltage, and temperature.

The Stratix series FPGA external memory interfaces feature supports:

    SDR and half data rate (HDR–half the frequency and twice the data width of SDR) input and output options

    HDR block with alignment and synchronization

    De-skew, read/write leveling and clock-domain crossing functionality

See the Stratix Series External Memory page for details of supported memories and data-rates.

Signal Integrity

Stratix Series FPGA I/O banks delivers signal integrity, low SSN, and superior eye quality through many chip-level and package-level enhancements. For more details see the Signal Integrity Technology Center web pages.