Build your own FPGA (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#11

Post by buescher » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

blaiseofglory wrote: post #6

misnome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the "Electronic Lab" toys I had as a child https://www.petervis.com/electronics-lab/200-in-one-electron...

I remember those as a kid. Is there a modern version?

Yes. Elenco still sells basically the same thing if that's what you want. The competition seems to be something called "snap circuits" which is way too after my time for me to have an opinion about. Adults and teenagers can learn to build things from parts on perfboard or dead-bug style or if you must, on solderless breadboards. Or if you want to get into microcontrollers, you can buy humungous kits of the sort of stuff you might want to hook up to an Arduino for shockingly little money off aliexpress/ebay/amazon.

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#12

Post by jbaczuk » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

Electronics Engineers: I spent weeks designing and building this ultra-difficult complicated device.

Demo: Blinky lights

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#13

Post by mokus » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

This makes me wonder if there might be a project out there that can compile Verilog to a schematic or netlist for 74-series logic.

Edit: unsurprisingly, the answer is yes - http://pepijndevos.nl/2019/07/18/vhdl-to-pcb.html

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#14

Post by auxym » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

jbaczuk wrote: post #12

Electronics Engineers: I spent weeks designing and building this ultra-difficult complicated device. Demo: Blinky lights

Yep, blinky is the Hello, World of hardware.

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#15

Post by rpmuller » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 5:04 PM UTC

proto_lambda wrote: post #10

rpmuller wrote: post #7

Anyone know of anything similar for CGRAs?

What's a CGRA?

Course-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture [1], like an FPGA but with more robust logic units. Something I'd like to learn more about.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04509

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#16

Post by _tom_ » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

The source is 10 years old. Is there a more recent approach? (e.g. Amazon FPGA instances.)

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#17

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

buescher wrote: post #11

blaiseofglory wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember those as a kid. Is there a modern version?

Yes. Elenco still sells basically the same thing if that's what you want. The competition seems to be something called "snap circuits" which is way too after my time for me to have an opinion about. Adults and teenagers can learn to build things from parts on perfboard or dead-bug style or if you must, on solderless breadboards. Or if you want to get into microcontrollers, you can buy humungous kits of the sort of st…

[deleted]

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#18

Post by anfractuosity » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

_tom_ wrote: post #16

The source is 10 years old. Is there a more recent approach? (e.g. Amazon FPGA instances.)

You might find this interesting:

ZUMA: An Open FPGA Overlay Architecture - https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~roger/565M.f12/4699a093.pdf

To run an FPGA on an FPGA.

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#19

Post by nickpsecurity » Wed, Jun 01, 2022, 7:38 PM UTC

There’s also Archipelago:

https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-...

Someone could mix a version of that with the open-source RISC-V IP for an open CPU/FPGA combo.

Re: Build your own FPGA (2012)

#20

Post by pabs3 » Thu, Jun 02, 2022, 12:54 AM UTC

_tom_ wrote: post #16

The source is 10 years old. Is there a more recent approach? (e.g. Amazon FPGA instances.)

eFabless have some sort of open FPGA thing.

https://github.com/efabless/clear https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30437021