Developing with AMD's Kria K24 SOM: Introducing the K24 IO Carrier Card From Avnet
To help engineers take full advantage of AMD's K24 SOM, Avnet has launched a generalized I/O carrier card for the K24.
Last year AMD launched the K24 SOM, which is the second in their Kria system-on-module (SOM) lineup. The Kria K24 SOMs are optimized for development of edge applications with their compact form-factor that is able to deliver DSP-intensive applications while still being power efficient.
With the release of the K24 SOM, AMD also released a development carrier board with the peripherals for driving a three-phase brushless DC motor (BLDC), the KD240 Drives Starter Kit. Since driving a BLDC also requires the use of Hall effect sensors and/or quadrature encoders, the KD240 carrier board is mostly consumed with that supporting circuitry. The only other peripherals on the KD240 board are one Pmod connector, two USB 3.0 ports, and three Ethernet ports.
While the KD240 carrier board is a great carrier board that is extremely well suited for driving BLDC motors, its scope is narrowed to mainly just that.
To provide a broader scope for engineers to take further advantage of the K24 SOM's capabilities, Avnet partnered with AMD to launch the K24 IO Carrier Card.
The K24 IO Carrier Card is a more generalized carrier board for the K24 SOM, offering two HSIO Expansion TXR2 that expose the underlying Zynq UltraScale+'s four PS GTR transceivers, HPIO, HDIO and MIO for user application, as well as one Pmod connector (1A), and two Click Board™ sites.
The Samtec HSIO connectors provide potential compatibility with SYZYGY peripheral boards, while the Mikroe Click Boards™ offer an array of various peripheral boards. See a list of the Mikroe Click Boards™ available in Avnet's product catalog here to see what all peripherals can be utilized with the K24 SOM via the K24 IO Carrier Card.
Then of course there is also the standard 10/100/1000 Ethernet and USB 2.0 Host interfaces based on Microchip PHYs. The JTAG/UART port is accessed via one USB type-C port, while a second USB type-C port provides the 15V/45W power supply to the board.
The K24 SOM is hosted in the center of the K24 IO Carrier Card that is an overall dimension of 135mm x 80mm, making for a compact solution as well. Along side the the general user push buttons, switches, and LEDS, the K24 IO Carrier Card also utilizes a DIP switch to control the Kria's boot mode which makes it very friendly for development mode when JTAG boot mode is required (in contrast to the JTAG boot mode on the KD240 being available via a DNI jumper header).
As Avnet does very well with the rest of their AMD development boards, the proper Vivado board support files and PetaLinux BSPs are also being released with the launch of the K24 IO Carrier Card so that engineers can get started with their custom designs out-of-the-box.
The K24 IO Carrier Card will be offered in the K24 Development Kit on the Avnet website, which also includes a Kria K24 SOM and Quick Start Card. The kit will be available for purchase in Q3 2024.