Is it necessary to have the sense resistor used on the Arria II GX FPGA Development Kit for my own board design?

The sense resistor, R73 (Rsense) is used for power monitoring (current sensing) purposes in the Arria® II GX FPGA Development Kit. It is not necessary to have this sense resistor on your board if it does not require a power monitoring feature.

Refer to Figure 2-12: Power Measurement Circuit in the Arria II GX FPGA Development Kit reference manual. There are 14 power supply rails which have on-board voltage and current sense capabilities. The 8-channel differential 24-bit ADC devices and rails are split from their primary supply plane by a low-value sense resistor for the ADC to measure voltage and current.