Thread by @janmarjanovic

Please welcome a new addition to my collection of cheap #FPGA boards from eBay. This one is a PCIe variant of Pikes Peak accelerator from Microsoft. (1/8)

I have previously explored the Open CloudServer variant, in a special form factor and with a special motherboard connector. A longer description is available as a series of blog posts on my website: j-marjanovic.io (2/8)

USB cable contains the same chip as the previous board, and OpenOCD is able to detect the FPGA. It also reports the same part number as on the OCS variant - this is a really good sign. (3/8)

Plugging the board in a computer, the PCIe link gets established and the card presents itself as a "Microsoft Corporation Device". The PCIe core in the FPGA is only x8, even if the connector is x16. (4/8)

We continue by downloading the content of the configuration Flash; with the progress bar slowly progressing it seems like a scene from an action movie. (5/8)

We are in! The content of the Flash is not much different than the OCS variant - there are two images (recovery and normal), and the PCIe variant is only a little bit short. (6/8)

Finally I feed the obtained bitstream into the pin classifier. Another success, it seems that it is (roughly) able to recognize the pins of the DDR3 interface. (7/8)

That's all - in summary the Pikes Peak PCIe variant seems to be (from a hobbyist PoW) even better board than the OCS variant. The pinout of the FPGA can be obtained with a little bit of work and then this becomes a really convenient evaluation board with an enormous FPGA. (8/8)