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Sounds like they are planning on having an app store with pre-built cores that you can load into the FPGA depending on what functionality you want. It's a prett

by gh02t 8y ago

Sounds like they are planning on having an app store with pre-built cores that you can load into the FPGA depending on what functionality you want. It's a pretty good model and Arduino isn't the first to try it, hopefully it works well. My guess is that normal users will mostly stick to configurable pre-built cores and knowledgeable users will probably use more heavy duty tools if they wanna build their own. The hardware they've announced is absolutely loaded with features with an ARM uC, a dual core ESP32, a crypto accelerator and the Altera/Intel FPGA; hopefully they can keep the price reasonable. I wonder if they cut a deal with Intel to help subsidize the cost, since Intel just announced their new Xeon chips with FPGAs. I expect I'll buy one as long as it's under about $75. Only problem I can really see is that it doesn't have that many pins exposed, but that's not a huge issue. https://hackaday.com/2018/05/18/arduino-just-introduced-an-fpga-board-announces-debugging-and-better-software/ https://hackaday.com/2018/05/18/arduino-just-introduced-an-f...

dmitrygr 8y ago
"App store" I guess everyone gets greedy eventually.
- gh02t 8y ago
  It's just my choice of words, I don't think they are calling it that. I doubt they're gonna focus on monetizing it any more than the library manager they already have (which is to say, not at all). You can probably buy commercial IP cores for the FPGA they are using, but I seriously doubt they will be distributing those through Arduino. I fully expect that it'll be open source modules developed for functionality appealing to makers, the Arduino people have a history of being good citizens (excepting the weird copyright controversy, but that's not the same thing). Stuff like e.g. RGB LED matrix drivers, audio DSP or computer vision that fit hobbyist projects, but which microcontrollers struggle with.
aseipp 8y ago
Intel has been producing low-end, low-power Cyclone FPGAs for a while -- the Cyclone 10 is their newest entry in this product line, which is what this device comes with. To my knowledge this is the first one directly paired with a microcontroller. They normally come with heavier-duty Linux-capable ARM devices, if anything. Microsemi are the only other vendor I know who offer uC/FPGA combos like this. Anyway, they probably didn't get some kind of direct subsidy on this, but they surely got volume discounts like any other major buyer -- it's a completely, totally different class of devices than what you'll see strapped on a Xeon, low cost, and they've been selling these kinda chips for a while now, overall (Cyclone 10 LP is fairly recent, tho)

by gh02t 8y ago

dmitrygr 8y ago

"App store" I guess everyone gets greedy eventually.

gh02t 8y ago
It's just my choice of words, I don't think they are calling it that. I doubt they're gonna focus on monetizing it any more than the library manager they already have (which is to say, not at all). You can probably buy commercial IP cores for the FPGA they are using, but I seriously doubt they will be distributing those through Arduino. I fully expect that it'll be open source modules developed for functionality appealing to makers, the Arduino people have a history of being good citizens (excepting the weird copyright controversy, but that's not the same thing). Stuff like e.g. RGB LED matrix drivers, audio DSP or computer vision that fit hobbyist projects, but which microcontrollers struggle with.

aseipp 8y ago

Intel has been producing low-end, low-power Cyclone FPGAs for a while -- the Cyclone 10 is their newest entry in this product line, which is what this device comes with. To my knowledge this is the first one directly paired with a microcontroller. They normally come with heavier-duty Linux-capable ARM devices, if anything. Microsemi are the only other vendor I know who offer uC/FPGA combos like this. Anyway, they probably didn't get some kind of direct subsidy on this, but they surely got volume discounts like any other major buyer -- it's a completely, totally different class of devices than what you'll see strapped on a Xeon, low cost, and they've been selling these kinda chips for a while now, overall (Cyclone 10 LP is fairly recent, tho)