4 ms·
> It costs plenty of money. Not for the entry level. The Icestorm [1] tools are free software, in every sense of the word, and can take you all the way from V
by femto 10y ago
> It costs plenty of money.
Not for the entry level. The Icestorm [1] tools are free software, in every sense of the word, and can take you all the way from Verilog source (or VHDL using GHDL's analyser [2]) to a bitstream. An associated board, such as an iCEstick or iCE40-HX8K, costs $40 downwards. (Cheap enough that a friendly sales rep. gave me one for free on request.)
[1] http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/ http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/
[2] https://github.com/tgingold/ghdlsynth-beta https://github.com/tgingold/ghdlsynth-beta
- nickpsecurity 10y agoThe project is about AWS's using high-end FPGA's. It's going to assume they have money and already learned the stuff since they pay as they go. Whereas, for a page on introducing FPGA's, what you referenced would be good stuff to have on it. Especially in addition to Spartan boards or list of cheap kits. Again, this isn't an introduction.
- femto 10y agoJust wanted to make it clear to the casual reader, who was considering learning about FPGAs, that "plenty of money" doesn't have to be the case. It would be a pity if we lost a newbie :-)
- jacquesm 10y ago$150 should get you a half decent board with all kinds of interesting IO options and a free toolchain.
- Tom1971 10y agoAnd if that's too much, there are boards like this: https://www.amazon.com/RioRand-EP2C5T144-Altera-Cyclone-Development/dp/B00LEMKR92 https://www.amazon.com/RioRand-EP2C5T144-Altera-Cyclone-Deve... Together with a $10 USB dongle, you can get going for $35. It's still big enough to store small CPUs etc. A lot of fun!
- anigbrowl 10y agoNow now, don't be talking about how things are fun and might appeal to newbies or children. Gatekeeping is Serious Business and is not a fit subject for play or enjoyment.
- makomk 10y agoThe iCEstick is probably quite useful for general-purpose hardware interfacing tasks, etc but I doubt you'll be doing much in the way of FPGA compute on one of those.