Altium's Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01 is a unique, reconfigurable hardware platform that harnesses the power of today's high-capacity, low-cost programmable devices to allow rapid and interactive implementation and debugging of your digital designs.

NanoBoard NB2 datasheet

The Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01 takes the nano-level breadboarding concept introduced with the NanoBoard-NB1 to a whole new level, enhancing your ability to design, implement and debug an entire design before moving to the production PCB. Swappable daughter boards now support a much larger number of I/O connections from the target FPGA to the connected peripherals.

With the Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01, peripherals available for the daughter board FPGA are delivered on removable peripheral boards, providing a simple and cost-effective method for rapid prototyping of hardware concepts. The Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01 is designed to be a perfect complement to Altium Designer, the unified electronic product development system that transforms your desktop into a complete and interactive electronics design laboratory that uses LiveDesign.

LiveDesign is a unified electronics system design methodology that is based on 'live' engineering inside a programmable physical hardware design space. Altium Designer, the NanoBoard and LiveDesign, provide real-time communication and 'hands-on' interaction between you and your design during the development process. Unlike conventional electronics design flows, a unified design flow and LiveDesign eliminates the need to work in simulated environments, allowing you to run software on hardware in real time, right from the start of the design cycle through to final production!

You begin developing your system by implementing it on a reconfigurable hardware platform – the Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01. Your circuit can then be probed, analyzed and debugged interactively using an array of virtual instruments and JTAG-based monitoring features. As the implementation is performed within a programmable hardware realm, you can update the design quickly and many times over without incurring cost or time penalties. This allows the device intelligence you are designing to be moved between different NanoBoard platforms, or even to custom hardware – greatly accelerating the process of bringing your products to market.

Some architectural highlights of the Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01 include:

• Application-specific plug-in peripheral boards for complete system flexibility

• Plug-in daughter boards that allow you to target a wide range of FPGA and processor devices

• High-speed PC interconnection through USB 2.0 that allows faster download and debugging

• Built-in, high-quality speakers for enhanced audio output

• Integrated color TFT touch screen that facilitates dynamic application interaction.

Additionally, a wide variety of FPGA-ready schematic components (ranging from processors to peripheral components and generic logic), and a complete set of tools for development and debugging, are included with Altium Designer.

So as you can see, when combined with Altium Designer, a LiveDesign-enabled Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01 transforms your PC desktop into an interactive reprogrammable hardware development system – an Innovation Station!