61–70 of 81 posts
What has changed here? Are FPGAs faster now or are many more people experimenting, creating sufficient demand for custom hardware at short notice?
Could this be a hint at Intel's supercomputing and AI strategy? They cannot compete with GPUs on flops with Xeon, but an embedded FPGA might get them closer. It is a risky strategy however. Even if they can attain similar performance, which I doubt, programmability remains the big problem for FPGAs. I know Intel is pushing openCL but it simply does not have an ecosystem for software right now, and it remains to be se…
>programmability remains the big problem for FPGAs I agree because there's added levels of complexity with HDLs that SW doesn't have to deal with. What would be nice is if there was a tool that you could declare your problem (functions) and your constraints (throughput, LUTs available) and it would figure out the memory, ALUs and pipe-lining needed to solve the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have more than enough resources for video encoding, because all modern codecs have a macroblock structure. You don't need to keep the whole current frame in at once, you can slide a window around it. (Conversely, you do need to keep the matching area of the previous frame and maybe even the next frame in order to do proper inter-prediction). That said I would assume GPUs are more suited to this task. By FPGA stan…
You are also limited by number of access paths into the memory which holds, say, macroblock. I forgot about this issue, sorry. For block RAM in previous generation FPGAs from Altera there were one read and one write paths. To have two read paths you would need to copy block RAM as many times as you need read paths. This means that if you search for block content inside a macroblock with N parallel accesses you would…
On a whole different level, if you are merely interested in FPGAs in your computer then the PicoEVB neatly goes in the same M.2 slot as wifi cards do and communicates over PCIe, even if just PCIe Gen 2 x1. As far as I am aware this is, by far, the cheapest way to get an FPGA on the PCIe bus.
There's no onboard RAM on the PicoEVB, other than whatever the FPGA itself provides. That makes it less interesting.
The galatea from numato is pretty affordable and has 2Gb (256MB) of onboard RAM and comes with a dual ethernet and pmod breakout board from Amazon for $300 USD.
http://www.latticestore.com/products/tabid/417/categoryid/59...
The lattice ECP5 PCIe board comes with I think 128MB DDR3 and dual gigabit ethernet.
And for boards without memory but lots of I/O there is Mesa Electronics: http://www.mesanet.com/ CNC oriented but you can do whatever you want with the FPGA.
I thought FPGAs were limited to either cases where you need some custom hardware _now_ or where demand is low because, if demand is high enough and you can wait, custom ASICs are cheaper, lower power, and faster. What has changed here? Are FPGAs faster now or are many more people experimenting, creating sufficient demand for custom hardware at short notice?
FPGAs are a waste of Silicon compared to ASICs, but for fixed applications they are less wasteful than CPUs.
On a whole different level, if you are merely interested in FPGAs in your computer then the PicoEVB neatly goes in the same M.2 slot as wifi cards do and communicates over PCIe, even if just PCIe Gen 2 x1. As far as I am aware this is, by far, the cheapest way to get an FPGA on the PCIe bus.
Don't new laptops only have one of those, for their hard drives?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't new laptops only have one of those, for their hard drives?
It's confusing me. wifi cards don't need m2 slot, I thought it was a standard made for SSDs. Usually wifi cards use basic mini pcie sockets, even on old (2006>) 12" laptops you can find 2, albeit sometimes only one socket is installed (the other is empty space with pins there, some people even soldered one manually)
And key E is used for wifi. And this card here.
On a whole different level, if you are merely interested in FPGAs in your computer then the PicoEVB neatly goes in the same M.2 slot as wifi cards do and communicates over PCIe, even if just PCIe Gen 2 x1. As far as I am aware this is, by far, the cheapest way to get an FPGA on the PCIe bus.
Beware trying to use these on desktops with a PCIe adapter though, the adapters don't seem to break out all the correct signals, so you get USB, or PCIe, but not both.
On a whole different level, if you are merely interested in FPGAs in your computer then the PicoEVB neatly goes in the same M.2 slot as wifi cards do and communicates over PCIe, even if just PCIe Gen 2 x1. As far as I am aware this is, by far, the cheapest way to get an FPGA on the PCIe bus.
On a whole different level, if you are merely interested in FPGAs in your computer then the PicoEVB neatly goes in the same M.2 slot as wifi cards do and communicates over PCIe, even if just PCIe Gen 2 x1. As far as I am aware this is, by far, the cheapest way to get an FPGA on the PCIe bus.
Don't new laptops only have one of those, for their hard drives?
I only know all this because I just bought one, and have been hunting for something useful to put in that slot...