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The Terasic Comet A13 SoM and Evaluation Kit form a compact platform built around the Altera Agilex 5 E-Series SoC FPGA. The platform features FPGA fabric together with Arm Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 processor cores, LPDDR4 memory, high-speed transceivers, and expansion interfaces targeting edge AI, machine vision, robotics, industrial automation, and embedded applications.
The Comet A13 SoM uses the A5ED013BB32AE4SCS Agilex 5 E-Series Group B device and measures 60 × 55 mm. The module exposes 191 HVIO, 72 HSIO, 48 HPS I/O, and four transceivers operating at up to 17.16 Gbps through dual 300-pin SEAM8 connectors. Terasic notes that the HVIO banks support 1.8V, 2.5V, and 3.3V operation for direct attachment of sensors, cameras, and industrial peripherals.
Comet A13 block diagram(click image to enlarge)
Memory support includes 4GB LPDDR4-A connected to the HPS through a 32-bit interface, together with onboard 8GB eMMC storage and QSPI flash support. Memory configuration appears to vary between revisions, with the product page listing 1GB LPDDR4-B on the FPGA side while the user manual references a RevA version equipped with 2GB LPDDR4-B memory.
Comet A13 SoM layout(click image to enlarge)
Terasic also offers a carrier board providing microSD storage, eMMC boot support, HDMI output (1080p), and a 22-pin MIPI CSI-2 connector supporting four data lanes for camera connectivity.
Comet A13 carrier board block diagram(click image to enlarge)
Networking and expansion interfaces include Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0 OTG through Type-C, USB Blaster III with UART, a Type-C Linux terminal interface, and a 2×20 3.3V DE-GPIO header, together with LEDs, switches, buttons, reset controls, and EEPROM programming support.
Comet A13 carrier board peripherals(click image to enlarge)
Software support includes Linux BSP images for Ubuntu 22.04.03 with Linux kernel 6.12.33 LTS, available for both microSD and eMMC boot configurations. Terasic also provides documentation for building Linux images from scratch, together with resource packages, eMMC programming instructions, and board support files.
Development resources additionally include Quartus support, USB Blaster III programming, and Linux build workflows using Ubuntu hosts.
Carrier board passive & active cooling edition(click image to enlarge)
Terasic recommends active cooling when power consumption exceeds 7W, or when FPGA utilization exceeds 85% logic element usage with clock frequencies above 200 MHz.
Further Information
The Comet A13 SoM ships with an aluminum heat spreader and is offered in passive and active cooling versions. Terasic did not provide pricing information at the time of writing, although product pages and optional accessories including an IMX519 MIPI CSI-2 camera module, microSD kit, and cooling fan are already available.
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