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So FPGA prices have come down to hobbyist levels. Would someone point me toward hobbyist-level resources for programming such a device? Or is toying with machin

So FPGA prices have come down to hobbyist levels. Would someone point me toward hobbyist-level resources for programming such a device? Or is toying with machine code simply too tedious for achieving substantial results? My interest in these stems from the potential to hardwire inner-loop procedures that would otherwise have run atop a stack of multi-million LOC abstractions.

ghaff 3y ago
There's various open source work going on, e.g. at Boston University (https://www.bu.edu/rhcollab/projects/software-hardware/fpgas/ https://www.bu.edu/rhcollab/projects/software-hardware/fpgas...) but it's still pretty much at the research level.
- proto_lambda 3y ago
  Yosys and nextpnr have been production-ready for years, they handle your average hobbyist FPGA project just fine (and 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than the vendor tools).
rjsw 3y ago
What do you consider "hobbyist-level resources"? The tools to take you from HDL (Verilog or VHDL) to a bitstream to load into the device are typically free to download.
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
They were at hobbyist levels 15 years ago when Spartan-3 came out. Then everyone decided that FPGAs had to be premium priced and killed off the affordable parts.
- tremon 3y ago
  Spartan-3 never had an open/accessible toolchain, IIRC. That's what put me off from investing my spare time in it.
  - mwbajor 3y ago
    The toolchain is free (not open source) unless you are building very very high performance products. Even in industry we use the free Vivado most of the time. At one point, there was some Synopsys products that groups were using but they lagged in features compared to the vendor tools.
ta988 3y ago
There is a ton of open source stuff these days see: https://icestudio.io/ https://icestudio.io/ https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex https://github.com/os-fpga/open-source-fpga-resource https://github.com/os-fpga/open-source-fpga-resource
throttlebody 3y ago
Try https://www.papilio.cc/ https://www.papilio.cc/
SomeoneFromCA 3y ago
I bought spartan 6 board in 2016 for $35.
PoignardAzur 3y ago
I've followed this tutorial recently, and it's amazing: https://github.com/BrunoLevy/learn-fpga/blob/master/FemtoRV/TUTORIALS/FROM_BLINKER_TO_RISCV/README.md https://github.com/BrunoLevy/learn-fpga/blob/master/FemtoRV/... The author includes detailed instruction for how to build a micro-controller in Verilog on an icestick, starting from a very simple blinker all the way to a functional RISC-V core. My other suggestion would be: for most of the toolchain, skip your package manager and directly install the binary artifacts published on this Github repo: https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build You'll spare yourself a world of pain.

ghaff 3y ago

There's various open source work going on, e.g. at Boston University (https://www.bu.edu/rhcollab/projects/software-hardware/fpgas/ https://www.bu.edu/rhcollab/projects/software-hardware/fpgas...) but it's still pretty much at the research level.

proto_lambda 3y ago
Yosys and nextpnr have been production-ready for years, they handle your average hobbyist FPGA project just fine (and 1-2 orders of magnitude faster than the vendor tools).

rjsw 3y ago

What do you consider "hobbyist-level resources"? The tools to take you from HDL (Verilog or VHDL) to a bitstream to load into the device are typically free to download.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago

They were at hobbyist levels 15 years ago when Spartan-3 came out. Then everyone decided that FPGAs had to be premium priced and killed off the affordable parts.

tremon 3y ago
Spartan-3 never had an open/accessible toolchain, IIRC. That's what put me off from investing my spare time in it.
- mwbajor 3y ago
  The toolchain is free (not open source) unless you are building very very high performance products. Even in industry we use the free Vivado most of the time. At one point, there was some Synopsys products that groups were using but they lagged in features compared to the vendor tools.

ta988 3y ago

There is a ton of open source stuff these days see: https://icestudio.io/ https://icestudio.io/ https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex https://github.com/enjoy-digital/litex https://github.com/os-fpga/open-source-fpga-resource https://github.com/os-fpga/open-source-fpga-resource

throttlebody 3y ago

Try https://www.papilio.cc/ https://www.papilio.cc/

SomeoneFromCA 3y ago

I bought spartan 6 board in 2016 for $35.

PoignardAzur 3y ago

I've followed this tutorial recently, and it's amazing: https://github.com/BrunoLevy/learn-fpga/blob/master/FemtoRV/TUTORIALS/FROM_BLINKER_TO_RISCV/README.md https://github.com/BrunoLevy/learn-fpga/blob/master/FemtoRV/... The author includes detailed instruction for how to build a micro-controller in Verilog on an icestick, starting from a very simple blinker all the way to a functional RISC-V core. My other suggestion would be: for most of the toolchain, skip your package manager and directly install the binary artifacts published on this Github repo: https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build You'll spare yourself a world of pain.