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iCE40 was a good start, but boards based around that family are getting hard to find. For those who are building their own PCB and want an FPGA on it with minim

iCE40 was a good start, but boards based around that family are getting hard to find. For those who are building their own PCB and want an FPGA on it with minimal fuss, the iCE40HX1K comes in a TQFP-144 package and is still readily available from the usual retailers for such things. Nice for hobby PCB makers, but not a current-day solution for easy FPGA projects for software devs. IMO Sipeed Tang is the product most like Arduino for FPGAs: boards ready to program with a USB cable and a range of plug-in-and-go peripheral boards available. The Gowin IDE is free but not open, while the yosys+nextpnr open toolchain claims full support for the FPGAs on the Tang boards. LiteX makes speccing out an FPGA core much more approachable for someone from a software development background, too, so LiteX plus a Tang Nano 20k and you can do all sorts of awesome things without too much trouble.

MegaDeKay 2y ago
> while the yosys+nextpnr open toolchain claims full support for the FPGAs on the Tang boards Citation needed. The GoWin FPGAs on these boards are still very much a work in progress. YRabbit is doing most of the reverse engineering on them, it seems, with the DSP blocks only implemented a couple weeks ago. https://twitter.com/YLRabbit/status/1768935258903503248 https://twitter.com/YLRabbit/status/1768935258903503248
- codebje 2y ago
  https://github.com/YosysHQ/apicula https://github.com/YosysHQ/apicula Project Apicula says "currently supported boards are ... [list of mostly Tang boards]" without qualification. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it actually is qualified support, though. Do you think the actual support is low enough that one should avoid those boards for now?
  - MegaDeKay 2y ago
    It is definitely qualified support. Whether there is enough for you right now depends on your needs, plus the knowledge that the support will continue to mature as time goes on. A good indicator of what you can do with the open source tools right now is checking out this link [0] at Lushaylabs. It has a fantastic series of practical hands on and useful articles like making your own CPU and driving HUB75 panels. Plus "This series uses a completely open source toolchain which makes development open / fast and lightweight". There is also /r/GowinFPGA on Reddit. https://learn.lushaylabs.com/tang-nano-series/ https://learn.lushaylabs.com/tang-nano-series/
amsaltman 2y ago
Regarding interesting boards with the ice40, I recently saw an ice40 development system that is integrated into a microSD card and can be programmed by plugging into your PC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933917 Looks like you can then put the card into one of those microsd breakout boards and use it like a processor module.

MegaDeKay 2y ago

> while the yosys+nextpnr open toolchain claims full support for the FPGAs on the Tang boards Citation needed. The GoWin FPGAs on these boards are still very much a work in progress. YRabbit is doing most of the reverse engineering on them, it seems, with the DSP blocks only implemented a couple weeks ago. https://twitter.com/YLRabbit/status/1768935258903503248 https://twitter.com/YLRabbit/status/1768935258903503248

codebje 2y ago
https://github.com/YosysHQ/apicula https://github.com/YosysHQ/apicula Project Apicula says "currently supported boards are ... [list of mostly Tang boards]" without qualification. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it actually is qualified support, though. Do you think the actual support is low enough that one should avoid those boards for now?
- MegaDeKay 2y ago
  It is definitely qualified support. Whether there is enough for you right now depends on your needs, plus the knowledge that the support will continue to mature as time goes on. A good indicator of what you can do with the open source tools right now is checking out this link [0] at Lushaylabs. It has a fantastic series of practical hands on and useful articles like making your own CPU and driving HUB75 panels. Plus "This series uses a completely open source toolchain which makes development open / fast and lightweight". There is also /r/GowinFPGA on Reddit. https://learn.lushaylabs.com/tang-nano-series/ https://learn.lushaylabs.com/tang-nano-series/

amsaltman 2y ago

Regarding interesting boards with the ice40, I recently saw an ice40 development system that is integrated into a microSD card and can be programmed by plugging into your PC: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39933917 Looks like you can then put the card into one of those microsd breakout boards and use it like a processor module.