Chapter 7: High-Speed Differential Interfaces in the Cyclone III Device Family
7–3
High-Speed I/O Interface
Table 7–1 lists which I/O bank supports these I/O standards in the Cyclone III device
family.
Table 7–1. Differential I/O Standards Supported in Cyclone III Device Family I/O Banks
External Resistor
Network at
Differential I/O Standards
I/O Bank Location
Transmitter (TX) Receiver (RX)
Transmitter
1,2,5,6
All
Not Required
Three Resistors
Not Required
LVDS
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
1,2,5,6
3, 4, 7, 8
All
Not
Supported
RSDS
Three Resistors
Single Resistor
Not Required
1,2,5,6
All
Not
Supported
mini-LVDS
PPDS
Three Resistors
Not Required
1,2,5,6
All
Not
Supported
Yes
Yes
Three Resistors
Single Resistor
(1)
BLVDS
All
Yes
Yes
Not
Supported
(2)
LVPECL
All
NA
(3)
Differential SSTL-2
All
All
All
All
All
NA
NA
NA
NA
NA
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
(3)
(3)
(3)
(3)
Differential SSTL-18
Differential HSTL-18
Differential HSTL-15
Differential HSTL-12
Notes to Table 7–1:
(1) Transmitter and Receiver FMAX depend on system topology and performance requirement.
(2) The LVPECL I/O standard is only supported on dedicated clock input pins.
(3) The differential SSTL-2, SSTL-18, HSTL-18, HSTL-15, and HSTL-12 I/O standards are only supported on clock input pins and PLL output clock
pins. PLL output clock pins do not support Class II interface type of differential SSTL-18, HSTL-18, HSTL-15, and HSTL-12 I/O standards.
You can use I/O pins and internal logic to implement a high-speed differential
interface in the Cyclone III device family. The Cyclone III device family does not
contain dedicated serialization or deserialization circuitry. Therefore, shift registers,
internal phase-locked loops (PLLs), and I/O cells are used to perform
serial-to-parallel conversions on incoming data and parallel-to-serial conversion on
outgoing data. The differential interface data serializers and deserializers (SERDES)
are automatically constructed in the core logic elements (LEs) with the Quartus® II
software ALTLVDS megafunction.
December 2011 Altera Corporation
Cyclone III Device Handbook
Volume 1
ALTERA [ ALTERA CORPORATION ]
