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Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

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Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#21

Post by taneq »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #8
NoiseBert69 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At work we always have 20-30x FT2232H on stock. They are super useful - they speak GPIO, I2C, SPI, parallel FIFO, etc. And their pyFTDI Python lib is great.

Just be careful as the counterfeit FTDI chips can have bad internal regulators etc. (Usually those small Red UART and GPIO breakout hobby PCB.) Usually better to use the vendor supplied JTAG tools, or build your own with known good silicon. Recovering FPGA hardware is always a mixed bag of what IP and documentation is available to bring up the board. Looks like nice silicon though. =3

Also beware that FTDI has bricked swathes of gear that (often inadvertently) used counterfeit chips, via driver updates. So if you buy gear that uses an FTDI chip then if you’re unlucky want it turns out to be counterfeit, your thing might get bricked. :/

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#22

Post by NoiseBert69 »

bloggie wrote: post #20
NoiseBert69 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all FTDI series are faked. Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know. Same for ST. Only the STM32F103 is a well known bad actor in the market.

In my experience the f103 clones fix silicon bugs and some even have improved peripherals (like i2c)

Problem is that they still using the ST HAL which is not aware of the fixes in the background.

90% of the standard stuff will work. But as soon as you dig into the exotic modes bad things will happen.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#24

Post by djoldman »

"""

dmesg log :

[ 0.388790] pci 0000:00:00.0: [14e4:2712] type 01 class 0x060400

[ 0.388817] pci 0000:00:00.0: PME# supported from D0 D3hot

[ 0.389752] pci 0000:00:00.0: bridge configuration invalid ([bus 00-00]), reconfiguring

[ 0.495733] brcm-pcie 1000110000.pcie: link up, 5.0 GT/s PCIe x1 (!SSC)

[ 0.495759] pci 0000:01:00.0: [dabc:1017] type 00 class 0x020000

...

Since most people might not be intimately as familiar with PCIe terminology, allow me to quickly document what is going on here.

0000:00:00.0: is the identifier ...

[14e4:2712]: is the device’s [vendor id:device id], these vendor id identifiers are assigned by the PCI standard body to hardware vendors. Vendors are then free to define there own vendor id’s.

The full list of official vendor id’s and released device id can be found : https://admin.pci-ids.ucw.cz/read/PC/14e4 or in the linux kernel code...

"""

Wouldn't it be really nice if dmesg had more info about devices?

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#26

Post by bschwindHN »

duskwuff wrote: post #4

For what it's worth: if you have a FT2232H adapter hanging around (and if you don't, you should consider getting one), those adapters can easily be flashed to be compatible with Vivado: https://docs.amd.com/r/en-US/ug908-vivado-programming-debugg...

I _do_ happen to have one laying around from another project, weirdly enough. I've never done FPGA work though, when you say it's compatible with Vivado, what does that mean in practice? I can configure an AMD FPGA, or something more?

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#27

Post by ddlsmurf »

bschwindHN wrote: post #26
duskwuff wrote: post #4

For what it's worth: if you have a FT2232H adapter hanging around (and if you don't, you should consider getting one), those adapters can easily be flashed to be compatible with Vivado: https://docs.amd.com/r/en-US/ug908-vivado-programming-debugg...

I _do_ happen to have one laying around from another project, weirdly enough. I've never done FPGA work though, when you say it's compatible with Vivado, what does that mean in practice? I can configure an AMD FPGA, or something more?

I think they mean it can be flashed into a programer/jtag interface compatible with vivado. If you want to get started with fpga, may I recommend 1bitsquared.com 's products

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#28

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Is anyone aware of any examples of FPGAs used to implement neural nets or other connectionist architectures?

What's exciting about FPGAs is that they make "custom" chips affordable for colleges and even individuals... At this point in time, with the AI world fixated on LLMs, it seems that there's an opportunity for small groups/individuals to use FPGAs to experiment with more animal-like ground-up approaches to intelligence.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#29

Post by stephen_g »

hmry wrote: post #3
mati365 wrote: post #2

What's special about this?

These chips usually cost $1k-$2k when bought new individually from the manufacturer

Yeah Xilinx’s pricing curve is incredibly steep. Probably makes sense since they’re used in things like defence (radar, electronic warfare) so they can sell them in low quantities for huge prices and people will still buy them.

But with decent volume they get pretty cheap - for example there are video converters they have FPGAs in them that you can buy for less than you can buy the FPGA part in single qty - which means the manufacturer of the device is getting the FPGA for 5-10% of list price.

Re: Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

#30

Post by matt-p »

taneq wrote: post #21
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be careful as the counterfeit FTDI chips can have bad internal regulators etc. (Usually those small Red UART and GPIO breakout hobby PCB.) Usually better to use the vendor supplied JTAG tools, or build your own with known good silicon. Recovering FPGA hardware is always a mixed bag of what IP and documentation is available to bring up the board. Looks like nice silicon though. =3

Also beware that FTDI has bricked swathes of gear that (often inadvertently) used counterfeit chips, via driver updates. So if you buy gear that uses an FTDI chip then if you’re unlucky want it turns out to be counterfeit, your thing might get bricked. :/

Good, FR. Then you can send it back to who you bought it from. All vendors should do this.
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