Arm MPS3 FPGA Prototyping Board

The Arm MPS3 is a feature-rich FPGA IoT development platform built around the Xilinx Kintex UltraScale XCKU115-1FLVB1760C, one of the largest FPGAs available in a development board form factor. The board supports FPGA implementations of Arm Cortex-M class processors, small to medium Cortex-A and Cortex-R class processors, and dedicated custom designs, making it the go-to platform for pre-silicon software development and SoC prototyping.

With 4 GB DDR4 (expandable to 8 GB), 8 MB QSPI flash, 16 GB eMMC, and up to 8 MB of FPGA BRAM, the MPS3 handles everything from bare-metal Cortex-M firmware to full Linux on Cortex-A class processors. The FMC-HPC expansion port provides up to 160 I/O lines and 10 multi-gigabit transceivers for high-speed interface prototyping, while two Arduino shield slots and four Pmod ports connect sensors, motors, and other design-specific peripherals.

MPS3 Board Revisions: Rev B and Rev C

Two MPS3 revisions are in circulation and they differ in ways that matter when you inherit an existing board or a debug script. Per Arm, a small number of design improvements were made between the earlier Rev B (HBI-0309B) boards and the Rev C (HBI-0309C) boards, which have been available since 2018:

• Debug reset. CMSIS-DAP / DAPLink debug over USB drives nTRST on Rev B boards and nSRST on Rev C boards, so a reset sequence written against one revision may not behave the same on the other.
• Serial. Rev C boards implement a DAPLink / CMSIS-DAP CDC virtual COM port that can be routed to the FPGA UART. Rev B boards do not.
• Arduino Shield. The revision upgrade improved the performance of the Arduino Shield interfaces on Rev C boards.

Check the HBI number silkscreened on the board before reusing scripts or expansion hardware across units. GSAS supplies current-revision boards and can confirm the revision on any unit before despatch.

Technical Specifications

Corstone reference subsystems on MPS3

The MPS3 is the canonical Arm Cortex-M / Cortex-A bring-up platform for the Corstone-300 and Corstone-310 reference subsystems, Arm’s pre-integrated subsystem IP that combines Cortex-M cores with peripherals, security, and (optionally) Ethos-U NPU support. Per Arm’s published Corstone documentation, MPS3 runs:

• Corstone-300: Cortex-M55 + Ethos-U55 (edge AI reference subsystem)
• Corstone-310: Cortex-M85 + Ethos-U55 (high-performance edge AI variant)
• SSE-200 / SSE-300 legacy subsystem images for Cortex-M family evaluation

For Corstone-315 / Corstone-320 (newer Cortex-M + Ethos-U85 subsystems) the canonical platform is MPS4.

Software Development

The MPS3 enables development across the full Arm software spectrum:

• Linux on Cortex-A or Cortex-R class FPGA images
• Mbed OS / CMSIS-RTOS on Cortex-M class FPGA images
• Zephyr RTOS with board support packages for Corstone subsystems
• Bare metal firmware development and bring-up
• Tool development: compiler, debugger, and RTOS integration

MPS Board Comparison

Why GSAS for MPS3

GSAS provides MPS3 FPGA prototyping boards in India with manufacturer warranty and local application engineering support. The MPS3 is the recommended platform for teams prototyping complex SoC designs, running Linux on Cortex-A FPGA images, or evaluating multiple Arm processor variants on a single board. Our team assists with FPGA image selection, DDR4 configuration, FMC-HPC integration, and development toolchain setup with Keil MDK, Arm Development Studio, or Zephyr.