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FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

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Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#41

Post by jeffreyrogers »

topspin wrote: post #35
rowanG077 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. The time for an intern to go from nothing to a blinking LED is not an interesting metric at all for a professional tool.

Professional tools are judged by such metrics. Manufacturers put tremendous effort into onboarding neophytes because they know whichever stack of tools get the job done with the lowest cost labor will grab a lot of market. The old heads that can write Verilog from memory are trapped in zoom meetings dealing with 'managers.' Sadly this frequently manifests as huge, Eclipse based bloatware with byzantine installation p…

Typically you just use the tool the vendor provides. Vivado if you're using Xilinx. Quartus if you're using Altera. I agree that the tools are bloated monstrosities whichever one you're using.

Source: I'm an FPGA engineer (sometimes).

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#42

Post by topspin »

the__alchemist wrote: post #5

How does this compare to alternatives for learning FPGA? What's the significance of the duino suffix? When would you choose FPGA over something like an STM32? From what an internet search leads to, they can be faster / do more things in parallel for the price. And you can add capabilities (More timers? More op amps?) with firmware updates. Is this at the core of when you'd choose one? I've no experience with FPGA, bu…

> When would you choose FPGA over something like an STM32?

Essentially for the same reason you choose to use a GPU instead of a CPU. FPGAs deliver application specific circuitry that outperforms a general purpose device. Typically these are high throughput applications; signal processing (SDR), image processing (find the license plates), audio processing etc. While it might be conceivable to do many of these tasks with very fast MCUs, often there are power budgets or other constraints that can't be met.

For example, imagine your application might be handled by either a.) STM32F4 running full tilt at 160 MHz or b.) an iCE5LP4K at 50 MHz. The former could consume just south of 200mW, whereas the latter might be around 10mW. That's a very big difference when you're running on a 100mAh embedded lipo battery or 40mAh coin cell.

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#44

Post by vrangan »

victor82 wrote: post #33
alfiedotwtf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the best place to start learning about FPGAs? I've been wanting to dip my toes in, but not sure where to begin.

If you are already familiar with Python I could recommend start with this tutorial: https://github.com/RobertBaruch/nmigen-tutorial

Also, icestudio (https://icestudio.io/) is a gentle way to get introduced with minimal knowledge to the verilog side of things. As others have posted, the learning curve for HW can be steep and development tools tend to be in the dark ages as compared to those for SW development. eg. you will spend a lot of time hitting your head on a wall with debugging HW if you arent careful to follow a process of linting and simulating your design well before going to HW.

nMigen is highly recommended.

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#45

Post by gh02t »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #28

How about an FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple (or not really), supported by OSS toolchain and can emulate a RISC-V SoC with performance sufficient to run a fully-functional Linux desktop? I once stumbled upon an article where somebody FPGA-ed (with a much bigger board, I don't insist it has to be this small and simple) a RISC-V system to make a "RISC-V PC" and I'm thinking about getting an FPGA to explore that sin…

I'm not sure if there really are any affordable FPGAs that are capable of running a RISC-V core with anything even approaching desktop performance. You'd likely struggle to get even original gen 1 Raspberry Pi performance out of anything in the sub-$100 range. I'm far from an expert on FPGAs though and have only dabbled, so if anybody knows differently I'd love to hear it.

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#46

Post by bsder »

rvense wrote: post #25
bsder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, but please don't downvote stuff like this-- respond with a thought out comment, thanks. I upvoted you. Perhaps Xilinx-land is different, but I have seen an intern go from blank Windows machine to "blink an LED" on an Altera board in about an hour or so with no Verlog/VHDL. I have never seen this with the open-source toolchains. Your experience differs. YMMV. Disclaimers. etc.

It really depends on your prior experience. If you're a programmer that's used to working with a command line-based Unix environment, the open tools will feel a lot more familiar than the proprietary ones.

That's actually a really good point.

When someone says "beginner", I never think of someone who already knows the Unix command line.

I've been doing this for far too many years, and I'm struggling to think of anybody I know who does FPGA work and knows the UNIX command line--even among the experienced hands.

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#47

Post by bsder »

rowanG077 wrote: post #23
bsder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, but please don't downvote stuff like this-- respond with a thought out comment, thanks. I upvoted you. Perhaps Xilinx-land is different, but I have seen an intern go from blank Windows machine to "blink an LED" on an Altera board in about an hour or so with no Verlog/VHDL. I have never seen this with the open-source toolchains. Your experience differs. YMMV. Disclaimers. etc.

I mean. The time for an intern to go from nothing to a blinking LED is not an interesting metric at all for a professional tool.

> The time for an intern to go from nothing to a blinking LED is not an interesting metric at all for a professional tool.

This is highly dependent upon how often you use the tool.

If I do an FPGA project once every two years and the scope is less than 3 months, user-friendliness is very much a useful metric for my tools.

If I'm doing an FPGA project that is going to take 15 months, then lack of user-friendliness certainly won't stop me (but it will make me grouchy).

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#48

Post by funkaster »

mrlonglong wrote: post #39

Could this board be useful for playing with RISCV?

yes. Even one of the examples is a RISC-V core. However, your expectation should be around a RISC core that can be used as a microcontroller rather than a RISC CPU for running linux.

Re: FPGA dev board that's cheap, simple and supported by OSS toolchain

#49

Post by funkaster »

ruslan wrote: post #27
bsder wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When would you choose FPGA over something like an STM32? The answer is "almost never". Qualifications below. Learn the Cortex-M4 ecosystem first . You can do a remarkable amount of stuff by abusing microcontroller systems in weird ways. The tools for dealing with microcontrollers are MUCH better than the FPGA ecosystem tools (which suck--and that's on a good day). If you need an FPGA, generally you know it. The fir…

I'm currently learning programming FPGAs using open source toolchain, my idea is to completely go away from MCUs towards cheap FPGAs and RISC-V. This is actually my third attempt to mess with FPGAs. Several years ago I tried Xilinx, before that I tried Altera. But their proprietary bloatware made me sick. Maybe I'm too much used to command line hence cannot comprehend their world-wide recognizable goodies. On the opp…

if you're more comfortable with the CLI, you should take a look at the apio project (https://github.com/FPGAwars/apio). It neatly bundles all the required tools. Regarding HDLs, I'm still learning so can't offer any good advice on that.
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