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Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

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Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#51

Post by exikyut »

j_s wrote: post #40
exikyut wrote: post #32

I've gotten curious about FPGAs myself of late, particularly with video capture. A hopefully-on-topic question of my own, if I may: I've seen that some FPGA boards have HDMI transceivers that will decode TMDS and get the frame data into the FPGA somehow. That got me thinking about various possibilities. - I want to build a video capture device that will a) accept a number of TMDS (HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort) and VGA sign…

Perhaps related, if not quite as ambitious: https://hdmi2usb.tv/home/ - Open video capture hardware + firmware I would also recommend this project if someone doesn't have an idea of their own, and/or doesn't have any fpga experience. So if someone is looking for people with both of those doing work in the open who might be willing to mentor them, finding a way to help this project is a great way to get started.

This is quite interesting, thanks!

It uses an FPGA with DDR3 incidentally, huh.

Thanks very much for this, this is very close to what I'm trying to get at. I agree that figuring out how to help out on this project would be very constructive, I've filed it away.

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#52

Post by source99 »

For what its worth a lot time working towards Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate (and graduate) degree in computer engineering revolved around verilog and FPGAs and ASICs. After learning all sorts of principles and design skills we learned verilog so we can actually build decent size projects and simulate them. Then we would build real world projects with an FPGA and then the advances classes has us designing and simulating ASICs. Then the really advanced classes has us studying manufacturing ASICs.

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#53

Post by exikyut »

jleahy wrote: post #43
exikyut wrote: post #32

I've gotten curious about FPGAs myself of late, particularly with video capture. A hopefully-on-topic question of my own, if I may: I've seen that some FPGA boards have HDMI transceivers that will decode TMDS and get the frame data into the FPGA somehow. That got me thinking about various possibilities. - I want to build a video capture device that will a) accept a number of TMDS (HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort) and VGA sign…

This is a very difficult project. No FPGAs have anything to decode TMDS. What they have is transceivers that will take the multi-gigabit serial signal and give it to you 32-bits or 64-bits at a time. Then it's your job to handle things like bit alignment, 8b10b decoding, etc. You need 6MB of RAM to hold one frame at 1080p, and to do this you'll need to hold one for each input. That requires external RAM (there's no e…

I see... ouch.

Another comment mentioned the HDMI2USB project, and the main FPGA target of that project uses DDR3 FWIW. I get the impression that managing RAM is just really really really _unbelievably_ hard; not impossible, just pɹɐɥ ʎllɐǝɹ ʎllɐǝɹ.

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#54

Post by exikyut »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
exikyut wrote: post #32

I've gotten curious about FPGAs myself of late, particularly with video capture. A hopefully-on-topic question of my own, if I may: I've seen that some FPGA boards have HDMI transceivers that will decode TMDS and get the frame data into the FPGA somehow. That got me thinking about various possibilities. - I want to build a video capture device that will a) accept a number of TMDS (HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort) and VGA sign…

The capture thing appears to exist: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/hyperdeckshuttle/ - presumably it applies lossless compression. Lossless encoding within the h264 container should be possible.

That is interesting.

Hmm, I just found a teardown video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLs2CNhbKAs

I spy a Xilinx Spartan 6 at 2:16!

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#55

Post by duskwuff »

jsolson wrote: post #11

I'd start with learning a hardware description language and describing some hardware. Get started with Verilog itself. I'm a fan of the [Embedded Micro tutorials]( https://embeddedmicro.com/tutorials/mojo ) -- see the links under Verilog Tutorials on the left (they're also building their own HDL, which unless you own a Mojo board isn't likely of interest). Install Icarus Verilog and run through the tutorials making s…

A quick warning about Embedded Micro: do not use the "Mojo IDE". It's extremely barebones, and lacks many important features -- in particular, it has no support for simulation workflows or timing analysis.

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#56

Post by duskwuff »

jwatte wrote: post #47

You can start by buying a Papillon board and going through the free range VHDL book. That's the high level. When you want to understand CMOS and integrated circuits, you need some electronics experimenter kit, and a lot of practice in ohms law. Then read up on multiple gate transistors and (here my experience stops) lithography and small scale challenges (tunneling loss is a thing, I suppose?) Of course, "ip core" ca…

The board you're thinking of is the Papilio. The Papillon is a dog breed. :)

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#57

Post by kungito »

sandGorgon wrote: post #35

Its quite late here, so I'll be brief. You mentioned the words "how IP is managed in chip industry" - so I'm going to move past the bookish knowledge and the tutorials and the open source code. The chip design and EDA industry are very closeted and niche - there is so much knowledge there that is not part of any manual. For example for a newcomer, you wouldn't even know what testing and validation in chip design woul…

What compilers did you have in mind? I suppose you didn't mean compilers for general purpose languages since most of these are FOSS like C#, Haskell, c++, TypeScript etc.

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#58

Post by jsolson »

jwatte wrote: post #50
jsolson wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for an ASIC without spending a LOT on tooling, and really $10k is awfully optimistic even if you had all of that tooling (I probably should've just said tens of thousands). For Honestly, you might be better off just buying functional ICs (multi-gate chips, flip flops, shift registers, muxes, etc.) and making a PCB, though. Most crypto stuff is small enough that you can do a slow/iterative solution in fairly small…

If you do that, why wouldn't you use a FPGA or just a fast CPU? Microcontrollers and CPUs are blending in performance, and are cheap enough to plop on a board and call it done for many applications.

Sure, but if really want to avoid trusting trust (and you're of the mind to build your own hardware), FPGAs and µcs offer a lot of room for snooping.

Given the GPs suggested use, it seemed trusting trust was not on the table.

Certainly even a tiny FPGA can fit pretty naïve versions of common crypto primitives, as can any modern micro-controller. Assuming you only need to do a handful of ops for whatever you're looking to assert/verify, that is by far simpler than building a gate-level representation :)

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#59

Post by mschuster91 »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
exikyut wrote: post #32

I've gotten curious about FPGAs myself of late, particularly with video capture. A hopefully-on-topic question of my own, if I may: I've seen that some FPGA boards have HDMI transceivers that will decode TMDS and get the frame data into the FPGA somehow. That got me thinking about various possibilities. - I want to build a video capture device that will a) accept a number of TMDS (HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort) and VGA sign…

The capture thing appears to exist: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/hyperdeckshuttle/ - presumably it applies lossless compression. Lossless encoding within the h264 container should be possible.

That Blackmagic stuff is really awesome. Expensive as ..., but worth every penny.

Re: Ask HN: Where do I get started on ASICs, FPGA, RTL, Verilog et. al?

#60

Post by exikyut »

jleahy wrote: post #39
exikyut wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very interested in this. I read that one small design (which I knew was very small, but not quantitatively so) cost approximately $5k per small run. How is the cost calculated? I presume size of final wafer (ie, number of chips produced) at least; does transistor count per chip influence anything too? Finally, is it possible to produce and maintain a fully open-source design that's the chip-fab equivalent of the…

The cost depends on the technology. More modern processes are dramatically more expensive (don't even think about something like 28nm). If you're looking at something ancient like 130nm, 0.35um, etc then it's going to be something like $1-2k per mm^2. Normally there's a minimum cost of a few mm^2. Expect to get a few tens of chips back. Transistor count has no effect, they couldn't care less what you put inside your…

Hmm, I see. Thanks for this info, and particularly the bit about the pricing.
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