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Now we need the FPGA equivalent. The FPGA industry is still very much stuck in what was the pre-GNU era of software
by glouwbug 4y ago
Now we need the FPGA equivalent. The FPGA industry is still very much stuck in what was the pre-GNU era of software
- armatav 4y agoYes - someone make something for macOS/linux that’s actually usable
- IshKebab 4y agoI dunno, Vivaldi is quite good. Or did you mean open source? In which case I 100% agree. Still full of tools that are only usable by masochists and the people that wrote them.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago> Vivaldi is quite good You mean Vivado?
- IshKebab 4y agoErr yes oops!
- iostream24 4y agoNo really, the four seasons! So many tv commercials can’t be wrong
- sbierwagen 4y agohttps://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/arduino-mkr-vidor-4000?selectedStore=us https://store-usa.arduino.cc/products/arduino-mkr-vidor-4000...
- flaviut 4y agoThe magical part of Arduino isn't hardware with the Arduino branding, but a great set of open source core libraries & a easy to use toolchain. This hardware unfortunately doesn't have either of that; it requires Intel Quartus for design and synthesis.
- duskwuff 4y agoThe Vidor is unusable garbage. Arduino's tools provide no support whatsoever for FPGA development on the board -- they haven't even clearly documented the process for uploading a new bitstream to the FPGA. For all intents and purposes, the FPGA is an expensive toy you can use to run their demo bitstream, and that's it.
- wiml 4y agoThere are! I've used the fomu and the tinyfpga, both with the open source stack. (In the past I've tried running the commercial products under WINE, like most people did at the time, and it worked but was definitely terrible.)
- orbifold 4y agoThe commercial products run on Linux just fine, in particular Xilinx tools do for sure.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- kanwisher 4y agoLook at MisterFPGA they are doing a lot of cool stuff to make fpga a bit more mainstream with emulating game consoles, https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html https://www.retrorgb.com/mister.html
- iostream24 4y agoThe Arduino IDE is used to support programming your soft core arduino and its peripherals! It’s been around for awhile now… more than a decade https://papilio.cc/ https://papilio.cc/
- duskwuff 4y agoPapilio is pretty thoroughly dead. The boards have been out of stock for years, and Xilinx ISE doesn't even run on Windows 11.
- iostream24 4y agoFine. The parent comment was waiting for the day Arduino-level-ease would arrive for hardware design. Ok, so it came and went. A decade ago.
- coupdejarnac 4y agoI keep seeing this sentiment on HN-are fpgas something hobbyists actually get much value from? Do hobbyists learn Boolean algebra and know how to do things like design state machines from standard logic and rom? Programming in HDL is fundamentally different from C++ or Python.. I just don't get the allure of fpgas from amateurs who don't need to use them for work.
- jvanderbot 4y agoEmbedded C + Assembly + datasheet + custom startup code + custom dev board --> became Adruino HDL, Logic Gates, State machines + custom startup code + blah blah blah --> became ??? GP is looking for "???" to materialize.
- analog31 4y agoI think as microcontrollers have become more powerful, the number of things that can be done without FPGA's keeps expanding. With that said, I'm learning FPGA's using TinyFPGA just to add it to my tool box.
- krisoft 4y agoHobbyist is not a skill level designation. It means someone is doing a particular activity for fun, typically not associated with a business. There are hobbyist who wire up an LED, make it blink and get immense satisfaction out of that. There are also hobbyist who putter around with a scanning electron microscope in their shed, and everything in between. There are hobbyist who learn the things you mention and more. > Programming in HDL is fundamentally different from C++ or Python.. Ok? And cheese making is fundamentally different from radio astronomy. Yet there are hobbyist pursuing both. > I just don't get the allure of fpgas from amateurs who don't need to use them for work. Let me give you an example. One summer when i was younger I have found a Xilinx Spartan dev board in a dusty bin in our hackspace. Nobody around me did know anything about it, it was probably a donation originally. I spent about two weeks playing with that thing. The most advanced stuff I ever got working was some example code found on the internet which synthetised a pong game through a vga connector. It was generating the video signal through just turning its outputs on and off in the right patterns. That was total magic to me. I spent the time understanding every line of the code and modifying it to do different things. I was goofing off, learning about tech, and having a great time. I’m not saying this is the only way to enjoy an FPGA, but it certainly illustrates that hobbyist can get value out of one.