Hi community,

I have an Intel ATOM chip running linux debian live. I need to get data from a FPGA, about 5mb/s. I can't decide what is the best option since I never have developed a linux driver. Any advices?

ON FPGA side: - Option PCIe: direct PCIe core, less effort
- Option USB: need to add a USB chip to manage USB comm (was thinking of a FX3 with the GPIF bus between the 2 chips)

ON ATOM side: here is my question. Which driver is the easiest to develop and debug? PCIe or USB

Thanks for your advices!

I have no experience with PCIe, but USB has two features that might be useful:
1. Hot plugging. You can connect and disconnect your device at any time so (i) if you need to fix something in hardware, you don't have to reboot your computer, and (ii) by disconnecting the FPGA (and turning it off if it has external power) you reset it's state, which may be harder to ensure on PCIe.
2. You can write driver in user space by using libusb. Or so I've heard… Never tried it myself.

So if I were you, and adding USB interface to the FPGA chip was not a problem to me, I'd use USB.