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Alibaba cloud FPGA: the $200 Kintex UltraScale+

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

#71

Post by Joel_Mckay »

hxorr wrote: post #67
poizan42 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Importantly not just counterfeit chips but also completely legal clone chips. For context, for a long time Windows did not have a driver for the CDC serial communication class out of the box. But FTDI had made good Windows drivers, and their interface was easy to clone. So for a time there was a market for making 3rd-party chips implementing FTDI's interface and copying their USB id to be recognized by their driver[0…

The issue was, if I recall correctly, that the Microsoft CDC driver was quite buggy. This led to the situation where CDC device vendors were unwilling to produce CDC compatible devices, because the default Microsoft driver would be used and, of course, the blame for any bugginess gets pinned on the hardware vendor. Hence the current situation of many CDC-type devices that are intentionally incompatible enough with th…

In general, the Microchip CDC driver was free to use.

"The CDC class has been implemented in Windows (since Windows 98), macOS and most Linux distributions. Since Windows 10, no extra information has to be given in the start-up sequence as the operating system now has a generic driver that will be used for CDC. To support older versions of Windows (Windows 7 and earlier), provide an .inf file that associates with the correct driver."

However, these will not support the high-speed bit-banged JTAG mode FTDI chips can perform with the right driver. =3

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

#72

Post by afandian »

duskwuff wrote: post #61
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.

> Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know. Specifically, the FT232RL - a simple USB-to-serial chip. (And many of the clones are actually quite high quality.) As far as I'm aware, the FT2232H - a more complex USB to various-serial-and-parallel-protocols chip - hasn't had a counterfeiting problem, although I believe WCH has made some compatible parts. The STM32F103(C8) situation is pretty funny too. Most of the co…

I’ve always been curious why there’s no generic USB serial chip. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world. I’ve noticed ESP32 boards tend to come with one of two proprietary chips, with their own drivers. Do you know why this isn’t all standard?

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

#73

Post by epolanski »

Not gonna lie.

This ai craze makes me think that:

- there's not much of a moat long term in inference hardware (can't comment about training)

- the models themselves are a commodity that can be swapped any day

- the products are coming but not at the pace one thought. It's been 3 years since Chatgpt launched and we still have no decent service where I can inject documents and ask questions.

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

#74

Post by YZF »

epolanski wrote: post #73

Not gonna lie. This ai craze makes me think that: - there's not much of a moat long term in inference hardware (can't comment about training) - the models themselves are a commodity that can be swapped any day - the products are coming but not at the pace one thought. It's been 3 years since Chatgpt launched and we still have no decent service where I can inject documents and ask questions.

What do you mean by inject documents and ask questions? Doesn't Gemini let you do that, e.g. NotebookLM or Gem? (not sure what's the equivalent products from the other vendors)

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

#75

Post by epolanski »

YZF wrote: post #74
epolanski wrote: post #73

Not gonna lie. This ai craze makes me think that: - there's not much of a moat long term in inference hardware (can't comment about training) - the models themselves are a commodity that can be swapped any day - the products are coming but not at the pace one thought. It's been 3 years since Chatgpt launched and we still have no decent service where I can inject documents and ask questions.

What do you mean by inject documents and ask questions? Doesn't Gemini let you do that, e.g. NotebookLM or Gem? (not sure what's the equivalent products from the other vendors)

Not a great experience still, doesn't scale, not precise enough, still looks to be rag based, so you get the usual problems rag can't solve due to chunking, etc.

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

#76

Post by CamperBob2 »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #60
poizan42 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Importantly not just counterfeit chips but also completely legal clone chips. For context, for a long time Windows did not have a driver for the CDC serial communication class out of the box. But FTDI had made good Windows drivers, and their interface was easy to clone. So for a time there was a market for making 3rd-party chips implementing FTDI's interface and copying their USB id to be recognized by their driver[0…

Many Chip VID:PID listed in > lsusb or C:\> Get-PnpDevice -PresentOnly | Where-Object { $_.InstanceId -match '^USB' } | Format-List are considered copyrighted IP in North America. Many of the paid device codes are often not like other Communication Device Class drivers or free generic HID devices listed in the USB standard. Early next year Windows 11 will be locking out unsigned drivers from the OS. Good for keeping…

Early next year Windows 11 will be locking out unsigned drivers from the OS.

That's been the case since Windows 7 for 64-bit drivers, hasn't it? What's changing with 11?

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

#77

Post by duskwuff »

afandian wrote: post #72
duskwuff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know. Specifically, the FT232RL - a simple USB-to-serial chip. (And many of the clones are actually quite high quality.) As far as I'm aware, the FT2232H - a more complex USB to various-serial-and-parallel-protocols chip - hasn't had a counterfeiting problem, although I believe WCH has made some compatible parts. The STM32F103(C8) situation is pretty funny too. Most of the co…

I’ve always been curious why there’s no generic USB serial chip. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world. I’ve noticed ESP32 boards tend to come with one of two proprietary chips, with their own drivers. Do you know why this isn’t all standard?

As someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the USB CDC drivers (the closest thing to a "generic USB serial" interface) on Windows were buggy for a very long time, so vendors avoided it. It'd be feasible to make one now, but there's no compelling reason for vendors to change, either.

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

#78

Post by Joel_Mckay »

afandian wrote: post #72
duskwuff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only the most popular FT232 as far as I know. Specifically, the FT232RL - a simple USB-to-serial chip. (And many of the clones are actually quite high quality.) As far as I'm aware, the FT2232H - a more complex USB to various-serial-and-parallel-protocols chip - hasn't had a counterfeiting problem, although I believe WCH has made some compatible parts. The STM32F103(C8) situation is pretty funny too. Most of the co…

I’ve always been curious why there’s no generic USB serial chip. It seems like the most obvious thing in the world. I’ve noticed ESP32 boards tend to come with one of two proprietary chips, with their own drivers. Do you know why this isn’t all standard?

The generic CDC class does not support high-speed bit-bang JTAG modes. Most ESP32 chips have a built in boot-loader for normal 3.3v UART protocols.

Retro computer eMMC memory-recovery hardware like the xgecu T76 is a USB3.0 device with built in FPGA and gpio voltage-level-shifters. It may eventually solve a lot of the hobby diagnostic/recovery tool issues, but the Beta software is currently Windows only. There is a FOSS project that should port to Linux and MacOS systems soon:

https://gitlab.com/DavidGriffith/minipro.git

Keep in mind, the software is still being built, but I'd keep an eye open for full-speed JTAG support releases in the next year or so. YMMV Best regards =3

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

#79

Post by Joel_Mckay »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #76
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many Chip VID:PID listed in > lsusb or C:\> Get-PnpDevice -PresentOnly | Where-Object { $_.InstanceId -match '^USB' } | Format-List are considered copyrighted IP in North America. Many of the paid device codes are often not like other Communication Device Class drivers or free generic HID devices listed in the USB standard. Early next year Windows 11 will be locking out unsigned drivers from the OS. Good for keeping…

Early next year Windows 11 will be locking out unsigned drivers from the OS. That's been the case since Windows 7 for 64-bit drivers, hasn't it? What's changing with 11?

Hardware drivers not certified by the Microsoft lab will not install. No longer can folks dismiss the nag screen to run some bespoke piece of hardware.

This is apparently being done to improve kernel security and reliability. It could be a PR disaster depending how it is rolled out...

People can blame things like the old generic PC-case-bling LED driver CVE people and even its original author lost patience with years ago... lol =3

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

#80

Post by CamperBob2 »

Joel_Mckay wrote: post #79
CamperBob2 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early next year Windows 11 will be locking out unsigned drivers from the OS. That's been the case since Windows 7 for 64-bit drivers, hasn't it? What's changing with 11?

Hardware drivers not certified by the Microsoft lab will not install. No longer can folks dismiss the nag screen to run some bespoke piece of hardware. This is apparently being done to improve kernel security and reliability. It could be a PR disaster depending how it is rolled out... People can blame things like the old generic PC-case-bling LED driver CVE people and even its original author lost patience with years…

Hardware drivers not certified by the Microsoft lab will not install. No longer can folks dismiss the nag screen to run some bespoke piece of hardware.

Again, that's been the case since Windows 7. You have to go out of your way to boot the system in "Test Mode" to install an unsigned driver. Either that, or use Zadig to self-sign the driver. (Maybe they're no longer allowing that?)

Signatures were enforced only for 64-bit drivers in Windows 7, but Windows 10 enforces them for all drivers.

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