Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table • Hacker News Board

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#21

Post by joshu » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 8:09 AM UTC

ElaineB wrote: post #14

wott wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - and in record time - design on laptop to working board prototype in less than 2 weeks Well, it looks like there are 3 chips, a usual DC-DC converter, and that's all :-)

If you search around the communities - there's an STM32duino forum where the EagleCAD design files for #myStorm have been placed http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1276#p16407 It looks like they have 512K bytes of 10nS SRAM on the back of the board - but it's neat how the $5 Rapberry Pi-Zero plugs in at one end - some cool overall pics on Twitter if you search #myStorm

Suggesting someone search Twitter for a hashtag is not really good documentation. Maybe a link to a top level project page somewhere would be helpful.

I have been wanting to build a smaller project around an fpga so I am very excited about this, if they plan to sell it.

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#22

Post by makomk » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 9:12 AM UTC

zombees wrote: post #4

I love all the FPGA boards coming out but I really wish the software was better. Lattice uses the same synthesizer as Xilinx which is well known to be completely user hostile (will silently optimize huge swaths of code because it doesn't like them). The least headaches come from Altera but that's not a high bar...

The Xilinx synthesizer is certainly interesting. I had some fun porting a design someone else had created for I think Synplify to that a few years back, because it went and replaced a state machine crossing two clock domains with one that wasn't safe for that purpose.

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#23

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 9:45 AM UTC

rvense wrote: post #13

zerohp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This chip from Lattice is supported by icestorm. It is the only open source FPGA tool chain. http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

And I think you'll find this is the exact reason the iCE40s are showing up in so many hobbyist projects. I'm at my hackerspace right now. There's three people with HX8K evaluation boards at this table alone (I've got two, actually). None of us have even downloaded the Lattice tools. I've got the HX8K eval board doing text over VGA at 1280x1024 with a simple home-etched PCB that plus into it and some very naive code,…

[deleted]

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#24

Post by jacquesm » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 9:59 AM UTC

ElaineB wrote: post #16

rvense wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think you'll find this is the exact reason the iCE40s are showing up in so many hobbyist projects. I'm at my hackerspace right now. There's three people with HX8K evaluation boards at this table alone (I've got two, actually). None of us have even downloaded the Lattice tools. I've got the HX8K eval board doing text over VGA at 1280x1024 with a simple home-etched PCB that plus into it and some very naive code,…

If you read the blogpost on #myStorm that describes the hardware https://folknologylabs.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/a-perfect-st... It sounds like this board is going to be available for $30 and you add your own Rasp-Pi - but the $5 Pi-Zero plugs straight in on the end of the board. There's an ARM M3 acting as FPGA programmer, GPIO, ADC and up to 512K bytes of fast SRAM on the flip-side of the board. For $30 that seems…

Are you somehow associated with this project? It's the only story you posted and each and every comment associated with this account plugs that board.

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#25

Post by cliffordvienna » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 2:53 PM UTC

cottonseed wrote: post #11

papower wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have an intro to the myStorm board at https://folknologylabs.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/a-perfect-st... : "myStorm is the perfect combination of a $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, a $1, 32-bit ARM microcontroller and a $5 versatile low power FPGA – an open hardware platform – brought to life with innovative open source software."

Unfortunately IceStorm has only reverse engineered the 1K and 8K, not the 4K.

There is no 4K die. The 4K chips are using 8K dies, the lattice software limits the number of usable LUTs to 4K. IceStorm will give you access to all 8K LUTs in the device.

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#26

Post by cliffordvienna » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 3:01 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #17

ElaineB wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? On the http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ IceStorm site - If you look carefully at the table of supported devices - the ICE40HX4K-144 is there - 2 rows from the bottom

Am I right in thinking 8K refers to the number of LUTs/cells? If so I won't be fitting the Rocket RISC-V design in one any time soon. Although it's a good start - I'll be very happy to see the back of Xilinx Vivado awfulness one day.

PicoRV32 (https://github.com/cliffordwolf/picorv32) and ORCA (https://github.com/VectorBlox/orca) are two RISC-V implementations that nicely fit in ~2000 iCE40 LUTs. UCB-BAR V-Scale (https://github.com/ucb-bar/vscale) fits in ~4000 iCE40 LUTs.

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#27

Post by cottonseed » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 3:47 PM UTC

cliffordvienna wrote: post #25

cottonseed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately IceStorm has only reverse engineered the 1K and 8K, not the 4K.

There is no 4K die. The 4K chips are using 8K dies, the lattice software limits the number of usable LUTs to 4K. IceStorm will give you access to all 8K LUTs in the device.

I didn't realize that. Thanks for clarifying, Clifford!

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#28

Post by cottonseed » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 3:48 PM UTC

ElaineB wrote: post #15

cottonseed wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately IceStorm has only reverse engineered the 1K and 8K, not the 4K.

Really? On the http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ IceStorm site - If you look carefully at the table of supported devices - the ICE40HX4K-144 is there - 2 rows from the bottom

I stand corrected. See Clifford's other comment in this thread.

Re: Brewing Up a myStorm FPGA board on the kitchen table

#29

Post by nikofeyn » Sun, Jul 31, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

zombees wrote: post #4

I love all the FPGA boards coming out but I really wish the software was better. Lattice uses the same synthesizer as Xilinx which is well known to be completely user hostile (will silently optimize huge swaths of code because it doesn't like them). The least headaches come from Altera but that's not a high bar...

the national instruments myRIO board has probably the lowest barrier to entry for FPGA programming and also microcontroller programming since it uses a zynq processor, both of which are programmed with LabVIEW. it also runs a real-time linux OS. but it isn't available to the general public, being reserved for academic use. i am not for sure why.