/tech/ - Technology★

Anything iCE. You can synthesise it with FOSS.

http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

http://www.latticesemi.com/icestick

https://github.com/bqlabs/icestudio

>>856079

This, but to be clear it's not everything iCE. It's specifically the iCE40 chipset. It's the only FPGA with a completely FOSS verilog to bitstream toolchain.

>>856079

>>856080

Open source hardware? Oy vey!!! How long before that is shut down? T-t-he goyim c-can't build a RISC processor with that can they???

>>856068 (OP)

>but with an extensive programming background I should be able to pickup VHDL or Verilog very quickly

Software programming and stuff like VHDL and verilog while looking similar, require a different mindeset and approach of designing the code.

>>856102

No one knows more about horses than me, nobody. Horses are great, don't we love horses? You know they have a lot of horses in MONTANA! Anyone from Montana here? Beautiful. You know I won Montana and Idaho in a land slide folks. I like to win. Do we like winners? Like a race horse, you ever see those horses, the ones that just win all the time. I like those horses. And we're going to keep winning like a prized race horse. Big league.

>>856103

Oh.

Why would someone want an FPGA board rather than a SBC with a low powered processor? I figure the latter will use more power, but I assume the other factor is because an FPGA is a lot cheaper when you manufacture a product?

>>856288

What are the most common clock rates fpga can hit?

I'm curious how the Ethernet and USB ports work on that board. Are there routines you load into the FPGA to get a TCP/IP stack? Also how well can you implement numerical operations on an FPGA? Do you push the work to a FPU, or again load a routine to do it all in the FPGA?

>>856290

Usual FPGA circuit will use multiple clocks depending on the requirements of the circuit. You can have some part running at 1 Hz and push data to some bus running at 100 MHz. They don't usually go above 1 GHz.

>>856292

>I'm curious how the Ethernet and USB ports work on that board. Are there routines you load into the FPGA to get a TCP/IP stack?

Usually manufacturer provides IP (Intellectual property) cores https://www.xilinx.com/products/intellectual-property/ef-di-25gemac.html to handle networking, otherwise you build it using state machines. Most FPGAs use special transciever interfaces to push large amounts of data (>1Tb/s).

>Do you push the work to a FPU, or again load a routine to do it all in the FPGA

There is no FPU on FPGA, you can implement one but you usually just send it to DSP or literary build an adder from logic gates.

>>856324

>Would a beginner even notice the difference?

No, you could learn with $15 FPGA from ebay. Problem is that there are no external devices on those boards (buttons, leds, displays, connectors) so you have to wire them yourselves. If you're interested in "programming" (which is really logic circuit design) then it's best to use kits with external devices on board. Also there is https://opencores.org/projects which you can use in place of IP from big companies. For learning that should be plenty of fun.

>>856348

I have Mano's book which someone gave me a few years ago, but I'll keep this in mind should the other one be useless.

I recommend these boards and xilinx ise

https://embeddedmicro.com/mojo-v3.html

https://www.xilinx.com/products/boards-and-kits/1-3i2dfk.html

The Mojo has a Spartan-6 chipset, Arduino microcontroller and flash along with easy yo access pin outs. It also has a very excellent beginners tutorial: https://embeddedmicro.com/tutorials/mojo-fpga-beginners-guide

The xilinx micro is so small you can travel with it. Both are tiny as point in fact.

Hope this helps really love my mojo.

>>856371

Apologies for a dumb question, but what basic output pins do you have on a board like this? I see lots of peripherals but surely you can do basic high/low connections to a broad board, right?

>>856378

Ahhh ok. Now for dumb question #2. Is it necessary to master analog circuit design before digital? I know it's not one or the other, but is there a progression which should be followed?

>>856383

No, unless you're planning to design high speed circuits (GHz and beyond) or you're using analog sensors in your project (which are mostly simple circuits to implement unless you're dealing with low noise or high precision devices). Maybe, if you want to do digital audio then you'll probably have to add low-pass filter to the output (PWM sound). For general digital desigh ohm's law is pretty much all you need. You should at least be able to calculate what value resistor for LED you need. In summary, you can start with digital now and pick up analog bits as you go (most of the time you'll just do pure digital things such as: boolean algebra, karnaugh maps, state diagrams, VHDL... nothing to do with analog electronics).

>>856394

Ok that's fine then. I have a good grasp on the fundamentals, but I'd have to learn / review things more complicated than basic op-amp's. In fact I have a very nice book which covers such topics, "The Art of Electronics", which sadly I have not gotten around to completing.

Is circuit design the last tech refuge of the straight white man? Seriously now, it does look like a fun unchartered territory where the poz has not set in.

>>856544

>t. someone who has no idea about programming nor (analog nor digital) circuit design

>>856549

Explain your moronic comment.

I have a gameboy advanced how do I mine bitcoin?

>>856564

>advanced

you fucking mong

Do you guys recommend getting a board with an integrated processor? As a beginner this seems like overkill, but it does seems to be the trend these boards are going with, and it doesn’t seems to add much to the price.

https://store.digilentinc.com/zybo-z7-zynq-7000-arm-fpga-soc-development-board/

>>856544

An FPGA keeps the Pajeets away.

>buying into the silicon jew

kys op

>>856641

Why are you even here?

>>856570

You can always use a pure FPGA (say Artix 7) and lay out a soft-cpu architecture like MicroBlaze, and run applications with that. It will be slower than the integrated ARM-A9 found in the Zynq-7000 though. There's a lot of hype around the Zynq family at the moment as it does make some problems easier when built as a FPGA/CPU hybrid, especially if you want to transfer existing programming knowledge to your product design. It is also possible to ignore the ARM-A9 and still do something like MicroBlaze, but that would be strange. Perhaps one idea is to buy an entry level FPGA at the beginning and then a higher end Zynq board once you gain experience.

>>856820

phone wars shitflinging and speccy dick-measuring, but you guys are pretty crap so far. Step up your game, 9gag

>>856909

What the hell did I just read???