Agilent Technologies InfiniiVision MSO

N5434A FPGA Dynamic Probe for Altera

Data Sheet

The challenge

You rely on the insight a MSO

(mixed-signal oscilloscope)

provides to understand the

behavior of your FPGA in

the context of the surrounding

system. Design engineers

typically take advantage of the

programmability of the FPGA to

route internal nodes to a small

number of physical pins for

debugging. While this approach

is very useful, it has significant

limitations.

Figure 1. FPGA dynamic probe for Altera used in conjunction with an InfiniiVision

6000 or 7000 Series MSO provides an effective solution for simple through complex

debugging of systems incorporating Altera FPGAs.

• Since pins on the FPGA

are typically an expensive

resource, there are a relatively

small number available for

debug. This limits internal

visibility (i.e. one pin is

required for each internal

signal to be probed).

• When you need to access

different internal signals,

you must change your design

to route these signals to the

available pins. This can be time

consuming and can affect the

timing of your FPGA design.

• Finally, the process required

to map the signal names from

your FPGA design to the

MSO digital channel labels is

manual and tedious.

When new signals are routed

out, you need to manually

update these signal names

on the MSO, which takes

additional time and is a

potential source of confusing

errors.