3 ms·
Check out IceStorm (+Yosys, nextpnr...) for a pretty complete open source toolchain for ice40 FPGAs. It's really amazing to go from the infuriating to use vendo
by HansHamster 6y ago
Check out IceStorm (+Yosys, nextpnr...) for a pretty complete open source toolchain for ice40 FPGAs.
It's really amazing to go from the infuriating to use vendor tools with all their quirks and bugs to a single 'make' that just generates the bitfile without using the broken IDE or complaining about licenses...
The FPGAs are also relatively inexpensive (<5-10€ in single quantities depending on the model) but are on the lower end in terms of features and performance.
The tools should also support the more powerful ECP5 FPGAs, but I haven't tried them yet.
- jacquesm 6y agoInteresting, thank you for the pointer. I've been playing around with FPGAs a bit and this sounds like it might just be what I was looking for. Is there any starter board that you'd recommend for this workflow?
- HansHamster 6y agoI've only used the bare chips on custom boards, so I have no experience with the eval boards. A popular board a few years ago was the iCEstick for about 20€, but I can't find it anywhere for that price now. The ICE40 breakout boards from Lattice are also more expensive now for whatever reason. Olimex has a board with the HX8K that is more reasonably priced, but unfortunately doesn't have an onboard programmer... For the ECP5, the ULX3S board looks interesting. It's not exactly cheap, but also has more features than just buttons, LEDs, and pin headers like on the other boards.