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Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

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Re: Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

#2

Post by slug »

Nice, they have both Windows and Linux support. I got a Papilio Pro some time ago and it's fun to play with. There's also a few other boards based on the same Spartan 6 series with more gates/ram and cheaper.

Re: Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

#3

Post by mafuyu »

It's great that Lattice is coming out with even cheaper FPGA dev board options. The bare-bones student dev kits from Altera and Xilinx are typically around $70, but $25 is a low enough price for hobbyists and beginners to begin experimenting as well.

I'm not too sure about the USB stick form factor, though. I have Texas Instrument's F2013 dev board[0], which is also a USB stick-type device. It's adorable; it's cute; and it has everything you need on-board (both the emulator and target), but you end up not being able to do anything very useful with it (unless you get very creative[1]). Hack-A-Day seems to agree[2].

Part of the reason this eval board is so cheap is that most FPGA evaluation boards have a bunch of peripherals that you can toy around with. My worry is that the lack of peripherals, low number of I/O pins, and the USB form factor might work against the product. That said, it does have an IrDA transceiver, which should enable some cool demos like acting as a TV remote.

If you're looking for a cheap FPGA board to use as part of a greater project, take a look at Lattice's iCE40-HX8K Breakout Board[3]. It's double the price, but it has all the basics and has tons of I/O to use. You can see Mike from mikeselectricstuff use it in his iPod Nano LCD project here: http://youtu.be/IIR1Bw8T_vM .

[0]: http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndK...

[1]: http://forum.43oh.com/topic/248-ezprobe-ez430-based-logic-pr...

[2]: http://hackaday.com/2011/01/30/hands-on-with-ez430-f2013/

[3]: http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndK...

Re: Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

#5

Post by zerohp »

salgernon wrote: post #4

Does anyone have any experience with this tool chain? Would this be a good way to - from a hobbiest standpoint- get started with fpga and logic synthesis?

My first FPGA was a cheap Lattice kit and I never fully wrapped my head around their toolchain (Diamond). It has everything you need but the workflow and UI made it hard for me as a beginner. I also found the documentation and tutorials to be lacking.

Later, I started using an Altera FPGA for my hobby projects and I'm much happier with their software. I am beginning a research project using Xilinx (ISE) now. I'm not sure if its better than Quartus, but its better than Diamond.

Re: Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

#6

Post by jws »

Specs:

  • 1280 Four input LUT logic cells
  • 64Kbit of RAM
  • 32Mbit flash
  • a PLL
  • Two sets of 8 digital I/O pins
  • One Pmod connector (2x6 0.10" socket, some sort of digital interface)
  • 5 LEDs
  • An IrDA transceiver
  • USB dongle form factor, programmed from USB, can look like a UART from FPGA to PC
The design software appears to only function on the Windows operating system.

Re: Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

#7

Post by sexmonad »

slug wrote: post #2

Nice, they have both Windows and Linux support. I got a Papilio Pro some time ago and it's fun to play with. There's also a few other boards based on the same Spartan 6 series with more gates/ram and cheaper.

Can you list some of the boards that are both cheaper and more capable?

Re: Lattice's $24.99 FPGA Evaluation Kit

#9

Post by ahoodlum »

salgernon wrote: post #4

Does anyone have any experience with this tool chain? Would this be a good way to - from a hobbiest standpoint- get started with fpga and logic synthesis?

tl;dr: Yes

I've used the Xilinx toolchain as well as the Lattice toolchain. The Lattice toolchain isn't as polished as Xilinx' but I find it simpler and less intimidating than Vivado & ISE. Sure, some things could be more streamlined (i.e. the transition from Diamond to Active HDL for simulation) but it's free and gets the job done.

I find a lot of the design resources (Reference designs, user guides, tool chain, etc.) for Xilinx very ambiguous and confusing. Not to mention that certain devices aren't covered by the free ISE WebPack and require a paid license to design around some of their FPGAs. I never understood this. I think, like Altium, they do this just because they can and because people using higher end FPGAs tend to have bigger design budgets and..well...they can get away with charging for the design tools.

Lattice has positioned itself to be an IoT FPGA company whereas Xilinx seems to keep developing FPGAs that have incredible computing power / bandwidth / logic capacity / etc. I think the complexity of the toolchain scales with at least the square of the capability of the FPGA.

If you are looking for a super-capable starter FPGA/CPLD, take a look at the Lattice MachXO2. It has embedded flash so you simply program the device and it comes up that way the next time you apply power. No external serial flash to worry about. There's even a breakout board for the MachXO2[0] that makes prototyping and adding capabilities via "shields" very straightforward.

I have no experience with Altera so I can't comment there.

[0] http://www.latticesemi.com/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndKits...

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