January 6, 2022

Other FPGA devices

Other than the Xilinx XC7010 on the EBAZ board.

PSOC5

As near as I can tell, this is not really an FPGA, or maybe it is. This is made by Cypress (but maybe Cypress is Infineon these days). Here is what WarlockD has to say:
Each one has about 24 logic blocks than have a 8 instruction logic processing system with I think a 40 product lut? I cannot remember the specifics, but each logic unit is enough to implement SPI, I2C, USART, etc. While their development system isn't terribly great, all it does is generate C code to set up the registers. So you could, in theory, reconfigure all the gpio, routing and luts in real time. Its all in the documentation and there are a few githubs of people trying to do it but they are rather expensive (like around 10 a chip). But they have up to 4 power domains so you can have one side run at 3.3v and one at 5. I really love them. Just...god the development system is awful.

Upduino 3.0

This device uses a iCE40UP5K. And here is what WarlockD has to say about it:
If you really want a fun fpga to play with with FULL opensource tools go with https://gtjennings1.github.io/ I have a few of his UPDuino v2.0s and it features a UltraPlus Lattice. This chips bitstream has been decoded. You buy his 8meg hyperram adaptor and you can even get a Linux running on a RISC-V core. Only runs at 3.3v but still fun to play with.
Version 3.0 is selling for $25 on Tindie.

DE10-Lite

This sells for $102 It uses an Altera Max 10 FPGA, had 64M sdram on board, and a USB with other odds and ends.
Feedback? Questions? Drop me a line!

Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org