4 ms·
Are there any fpga open hardware implementations available?
by pryelluw 10y ago
Are there any fpga open hardware implementations available?
- mlaretallack 10y agoIf you mean stuff that can run on FPGA's then https://opencores.org/ https://opencores.org/
- pryelluw 10y agoI also mean the actual hardware. :)
- monocasa 10y agoThis is the only project I know of. http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/
- rvense 10y agoQuite sure the answer is no. There was a student project a while ago but it was more of a proof of concept. Open source chips of any kind are few and far between, and generally not at the cutting edge, technology-wise. Patents, as usual, will make this hard, before we even get to the economic aspects.
- analognoise 10y agoI'd be more than happy with 1997-era (20 year patent expiry) FPGAs if they were open. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone else would.
- rvense 10y agoMe too. For some things you need to be as fast or cheap or low-power or whatever as the competition to win, other times you just want to see how far you can go. At my hackerspace we've been mucking about with Clifford Wolf's PicoRV Risc-V implementation on Lattice Ice40 FPGAs lately. This'll give you something that's maybe on par with a lower-end ARM Cortex-M, plus the flexibility of the few thousand spare look-up tables. All open and hackable with open source tools (except for the actual FPGAs, mind). It's not much, but it's a start.
- lvoudour 10y agoNone that I'm aware of. It would be a great leap as it would open the way for open source tools that go beyond netlist generation, but right now all major vendors keep their architecture proprietary and you need their tools to program their FPGAs
- buildbot 10y agoActual chips, not as far as I know. There is a completely open source tool chain for a small FPGA, the icestorm project. The VPR project by university of Toronto has several architechure models defined, but there is probably no way to turn these into a real chip. FPGa vendors in general are extremely secretive about their designs. (I'm a grad student working in The FPGA space)
- zafka 10y ago> FPGa vendors in general are extremely secretive about their designs. That is the part that saddens me. I had always wanted to be able to play with the internal programming. Back when I started they were not anywhere as big, and we almost had visibility.
- buildbot 10y agoAt least with VPR you can define /modify your own FPGA architecture file! They are written in xml and parsed by the tool when doing place and route.