5 ms·

Tang Nano 9K – FPGA SBC with HDMI

RF_Savage 4y ago
Nice to see more board with Gowin FPGA's. I'm sure they are now seeing more use thanks to severe shortages of Xilinx and Intel parts in the same class. Even Lattice iCE40 has bad availability. Having a FOSS toolchain (yosys+nextpnr from what I recall) supporting it also helps a bunch. While the for the Tang Nano 9K is not cracy cheap ~19eur for the board and 9.5eur shipping is not horrible. Hard to get a devboard with anything modern at that pricepoint with the same amount of LUT's.
- bri3d 4y ago
  IIRC the "Apicula" project for yosys/nextpnr support for Gowin FPGAs is pretty good, but still lacks a few key features for many designs - most importantly, Block RAM, but also PLLs and I think serdes/transceivers? I have one of the "4K" versions of this board (which also has an onboard Cortex hard core) and unfortunately still have to use the Gowin EDA suite for a lot of projects. It's getting there, though!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
rasz 4y ago
FPGA you can actually buy ($18 for this board on aliexpress, $20 ebay), with 1.2Gbit serdes blocks and 2560x1440 40fps HDMI IP block (2Gbit if YUV, 3.5Gbit if they mean RGB, typical Chinese documentation means you never know). Cheapest GW1N-1 (still 1Gbit serdes) boards are $10 on ebay, meanwhile you cant really buy anythink Xilinx/intel Reminds me of ESP8266/32 selling for peanuts with huge volumes available while people hunt for scalped overpriced STMs.
Taniwha 4y ago
I have one of these, haven't spent any time with it yet, I've been looking for something this cheap to give FPGA classes with for quite a while
ThrowawayTestr 4y ago
I just discovered these while I was looking for pi clones on aliexpress. Really cheap for what you get.
claytongulick 4y ago
I've done a fair amount of hobbiest microcontroller work, I'm comfortable with asm and c for low level systems stuff with 8 bit micros, etc... How hard is it to get into FPGA development with that sort of background? Starting from barely knowing how to spell FPGA?
- lnsru 4y ago
  Depends on what you want to do. For blinking some LEDs be prepared to write some asm level code. For gigabit transceiver system prepare to deep dive into complex IDE from the manufacturer. I am here minority claiming, that vendor tools are okay. Everybody else wants open source toolchains. Last week I dealt with complex clock distribution problem in my design. It was easy to debug it with vendor tools. I don’t know how far are these open source toolchains in such complicated matters.
- boondaburrah 4y ago
  How comfortable are you with functional programming? I've found digital logic to have more in common with describing data transformations than C/ASM, though understanding bitmasks/bitflipping helps.
- ahefner 4y ago
  It's not hard to get into at all, if you're already comfortable thinking in terms of bits and digital logic.
- dailykoder 4y ago
  Usually it's fairly simple to get your feet wet and a blinking LED. The problem with FPGAs tho is that you basically have to do everything yourself and apparently it's not easy for a lot of people to "get it". Even tho Verilog and VHDL look like normal programming languages, you aren't actually programming. You are describing hardware/logical circuits. Most things run, by default, in parallel, which you always have to keep in mind. But then there are things like processes which are evaluated sequentially, but they still behave different than a C-program. You could also use external IP-Blocks to not be forced doing everything from scratch, but they are not always easy to work with. So my (personal) conclusion is: It's not hard to get it running. You could easily do that. Personally I would prefer to go with Xilinx or Intel chips, just because you have more resources and a kind-of working IDE. Or you could go with some Lattice ECP-5 based chips and use the open source toolchain yosys etc. It can be a super exciting experience, but a lot of people just seem to find it boring. I am personally very grateful that I had an exceptionally good professor in uni that thought us most things.
lnsru 4y ago
How is the situation with IP licensing for these FPGAs? Are they delivered by vendor? Good quality ones? I see HDMI mentioned here. Is the library comprehensive or rather small one?
- Aromasin 4y ago
  From my (very brief) experience with FPGAs, for every popular IP block you can usually find an open-source equivalent that does the equivalent. Certaining for HDMI, I've used hdi-util from GitHub before and it worked on my old Cyclone II. They aren't very well optimized more often than not, but can save you a few hundred £€$¥ on licensing fees.
WhiteDawn 4y ago
Should take a look at their up coming digital logic analyzers too. Sipeed is packaging up some very interesting hardware at cheap prices. Barely any documentation though, so prepare to get your hands dirty!
inamberclad 4y ago
HDMI is a trademarked name, right? Many boards have 'DVI' that is actually HDMI through a proper HDMI port, just without the branding.

Nice to see more board with Gowin FPGA's. I'm sure they are now seeing more use thanks to severe shortages of Xilinx and Intel parts in the same class. Even Lattice iCE40 has bad availability. Having a FOSS toolchain (yosys+nextpnr from what I recall) supporting it also helps a bunch. While the for the Tang Nano 9K is not cracy cheap ~19eur for the board and 9.5eur shipping is not horrible. Hard to get a devboard with anything modern at that pricepoint with the same amount of LUT's.

bri3d 4y ago
IIRC the "Apicula" project for yosys/nextpnr support for Gowin FPGAs is pretty good, but still lacks a few key features for many designs - most importantly, Block RAM, but also PLLs and I think serdes/transceivers? I have one of the "4K" versions of this board (which also has an onboard Cortex hard core) and unfortunately still have to use the Gowin EDA suite for a lot of projects. It's getting there, though!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

rasz 4y ago

FPGA you can actually buy ($18 for this board on aliexpress, $20 ebay), with 1.2Gbit serdes blocks and 2560x1440 40fps HDMI IP block (2Gbit if YUV, 3.5Gbit if they mean RGB, typical Chinese documentation means you never know). Cheapest GW1N-1 (still 1Gbit serdes) boards are $10 on ebay, meanwhile you cant really buy anythink Xilinx/intel Reminds me of ESP8266/32 selling for peanuts with huge volumes available while people hunt for scalped overpriced STMs.

Taniwha 4y ago

I have one of these, haven't spent any time with it yet, I've been looking for something this cheap to give FPGA classes with for quite a while

ThrowawayTestr 4y ago

I just discovered these while I was looking for pi clones on aliexpress. Really cheap for what you get.

claytongulick 4y ago

I've done a fair amount of hobbiest microcontroller work, I'm comfortable with asm and c for low level systems stuff with 8 bit micros, etc... How hard is it to get into FPGA development with that sort of background? Starting from barely knowing how to spell FPGA?

lnsru 4y ago
Depends on what you want to do. For blinking some LEDs be prepared to write some asm level code. For gigabit transceiver system prepare to deep dive into complex IDE from the manufacturer. I am here minority claiming, that vendor tools are okay. Everybody else wants open source toolchains. Last week I dealt with complex clock distribution problem in my design. It was easy to debug it with vendor tools. I don’t know how far are these open source toolchains in such complicated matters.
boondaburrah 4y ago
How comfortable are you with functional programming? I've found digital logic to have more in common with describing data transformations than C/ASM, though understanding bitmasks/bitflipping helps.
ahefner 4y ago
It's not hard to get into at all, if you're already comfortable thinking in terms of bits and digital logic.
dailykoder 4y ago
Usually it's fairly simple to get your feet wet and a blinking LED. The problem with FPGAs tho is that you basically have to do everything yourself and apparently it's not easy for a lot of people to "get it". Even tho Verilog and VHDL look like normal programming languages, you aren't actually programming. You are describing hardware/logical circuits. Most things run, by default, in parallel, which you always have to keep in mind. But then there are things like processes which are evaluated sequentially, but they still behave different than a C-program. You could also use external IP-Blocks to not be forced doing everything from scratch, but they are not always easy to work with. So my (personal) conclusion is: It's not hard to get it running. You could easily do that. Personally I would prefer to go with Xilinx or Intel chips, just because you have more resources and a kind-of working IDE. Or you could go with some Lattice ECP-5 based chips and use the open source toolchain yosys etc. It can be a super exciting experience, but a lot of people just seem to find it boring. I am personally very grateful that I had an exceptionally good professor in uni that thought us most things.

lnsru 4y ago

How is the situation with IP licensing for these FPGAs? Are they delivered by vendor? Good quality ones? I see HDMI mentioned here. Is the library comprehensive or rather small one?

Aromasin 4y ago
From my (very brief) experience with FPGAs, for every popular IP block you can usually find an open-source equivalent that does the equivalent. Certaining for HDMI, I've used hdi-util from GitHub before and it worked on my old Cyclone II. They aren't very well optimized more often than not, but can save you a few hundred £€$¥ on licensing fees.

WhiteDawn 4y ago

Should take a look at their up coming digital logic analyzers too. Sipeed is packaging up some very interesting hardware at cheap prices. Barely any documentation though, so prepare to get your hands dirty!

inamberclad 4y ago

HDMI is a trademarked name, right? Many boards have 'DVI' that is actually HDMI through a proper HDMI port, just without the branding.