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Googling the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ it seems kinda expensive. Of course plenty of hobbies let people spend thousands (or more) so there's nothing wrong with t

Googling the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ it seems kinda expensive. Of course plenty of hobbies let people spend thousands (or more) so there's nothing wrong with that if you've got the money. But is it the end target for your project? Or do you have ambitions to go beyond that?

kanetw 3y ago
The Kria SOM in use here is like $300.
PfhorSlayer 3y ago
Let's be clear here, this is a toy. Beyond being a fun project to work on that could maybe get my foot in the door were I ever to decide to change careers and move into hardware design, this is not going to change the GPU landscape or compete with any of the commercial players. What it might do is pave the way for others to do interesting things in this space. A board with all of the video hardware that you can plug into a computer with all the infrastructure available to play around with accelerating graphics could be a fun, if extremely niche, product. That would also require a *significant* time and money investment from me, and that's not something I necessarily want to deal with. When this is eventually open-sourced, those who really are interested could make their own boards. One thing to note that is that while the US+ line is generally quite expensive (the higher end parts sit in the five-figures range for a one-off purchase! No one actually buying these is paying that price, but still!), the Kria SOMs are quite cheap in comparison. They've got a reasonably-powerful Zynq US+ for about $400, or just $350ish the dev boards (which do not expose some of the high-speed interfaces like PCIe). I'm starting to sound like a Xilinx shill given how many times I've re-stated this, but for anyone serious about getting into this kind of thing, those devboards are an amazing deal.
- belter 3y ago
  "...I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones..."
  - Rinzler89 3y ago
    Yeah you're referring to the Linux kernel but software is much cheaper to design, test, build, scale and turn profitable than HW, especially GPUs. Open source GPUs won't threat Nvidia/AMD/Intel anytime soon or ever. They're way too far ahead in the game and also backed by patents if any new player were to become a thereat.
- chrsw 3y ago
  >could maybe get my foot in the door were I ever to decide to change careers and move into hardware design With a project like this I think you're well past a "foot in the door".
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
I've been told by several people that distributor pricing for FPGAs is ridiculously inflated compared to what direct customers pay, and considering that one can apparently get a dev board on AliExpress for about $110 [1] while Digikey lists the FPGA alone for about $1880 [2], I believe it (this example isn't an UltraScale chip, but it is significantly bigger than the usual low-end Zynq 7000 boards sold to undergrads and tinkerers). [1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806069467487.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806069467487.html [2] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amd/XC7K325T-1FFG676C/2767544 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amd/XC7K325T-1FFG...
- bangaladore 3y ago
  I have some first- and second-hand experience with this, and you are correct. I'm not sure who benefits from this practice. It's anywhere from 5-25x cheaper in even small-ish quantities.
  - oasisaimlessly 3y ago
    What magnitude of a quantity is "small-ish"? How does a business go about becoming a "direct customer" / bypassing the distributors?
    - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
      I'm personally too far from those negotiations to offer any likely-pivotal insight (such as a concrete quantity), but my very rough understanding is that there's some critical volume beyond which a customer basically becomes "made" with the Xilinx/Altera sales channels via a financially significant design win, at which point sales engineers etc. all but have a blank check to do things like comp development boards, advance a tray of whatever device is relevant to the design, etc.. Basically, as George Carlin put it, "it's a big club, and you ain't in it".
    - bangaladore 3y ago
      Sorry for the late response... I'm new here :) I don't have exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure you can get significant discounts starting around 100 parts. So not much at all. Another thing to note is you can already get parts for significant discounts in 1-off quantities through legit Chinese distributors like LCSC. For example, a XC7A35T-2FGG484I is 90$ on Digikey and 20$ at LCSC. I think a personalized deal for that part would be cheaper than 20$ though...

kanetw 3y ago

The Kria SOM in use here is like $300.

PfhorSlayer 3y ago

Let's be clear here, this is a toy. Beyond being a fun project to work on that could maybe get my foot in the door were I ever to decide to change careers and move into hardware design, this is not going to change the GPU landscape or compete with any of the commercial players. What it might do is pave the way for others to do interesting things in this space. A board with all of the video hardware that you can plug into a computer with all the infrastructure available to play around with accelerating graphics could be a fun, if extremely niche, product. That would also require a *significant* time and money investment from me, and that's not something I necessarily want to deal with. When this is eventually open-sourced, those who really are interested could make their own boards. One thing to note that is that while the US+ line is generally quite expensive (the higher end parts sit in the five-figures range for a one-off purchase! No one actually buying these is paying that price, but still!), the Kria SOMs are quite cheap in comparison. They've got a reasonably-powerful Zynq US+ for about $400, or just $350ish the dev boards (which do not expose some of the high-speed interfaces like PCIe). I'm starting to sound like a Xilinx shill given how many times I've re-stated this, but for anyone serious about getting into this kind of thing, those devboards are an amazing deal.

belter 3y ago
"...I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones..."
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  Yeah you're referring to the Linux kernel but software is much cheaper to design, test, build, scale and turn profitable than HW, especially GPUs. Open source GPUs won't threat Nvidia/AMD/Intel anytime soon or ever. They're way too far ahead in the game and also backed by patents if any new player were to become a thereat.
chrsw 3y ago
>could maybe get my foot in the door were I ever to decide to change careers and move into hardware design With a project like this I think you're well past a "foot in the door".

0xcde4c3db 3y ago

I've been told by several people that distributor pricing for FPGAs is ridiculously inflated compared to what direct customers pay, and considering that one can apparently get a dev board on AliExpress for about $110 [1] while Digikey lists the FPGA alone for about $1880 [2], I believe it (this example isn't an UltraScale chip, but it is significantly bigger than the usual low-end Zynq 7000 boards sold to undergrads and tinkerers). [1] https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806069467487.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806069467487.html [2] https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amd/XC7K325T-1FFG676C/2767544 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/amd/XC7K325T-1FFG...

bangaladore 3y ago
I have some first- and second-hand experience with this, and you are correct. I'm not sure who benefits from this practice. It's anywhere from 5-25x cheaper in even small-ish quantities.
- oasisaimlessly 3y ago
  What magnitude of a quantity is "small-ish"? How does a business go about becoming a "direct customer" / bypassing the distributors?
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    I'm personally too far from those negotiations to offer any likely-pivotal insight (such as a concrete quantity), but my very rough understanding is that there's some critical volume beyond which a customer basically becomes "made" with the Xilinx/Altera sales channels via a financially significant design win, at which point sales engineers etc. all but have a blank check to do things like comp development boards, advance a tray of whatever device is relevant to the design, etc.. Basically, as George Carlin put it, "it's a big club, and you ain't in it".
  - bangaladore 3y ago
    Sorry for the late response... I'm new here :) I don't have exact numbers, but I'm pretty sure you can get significant discounts starting around 100 parts. So not much at all. Another thing to note is you can already get parts for significant discounts in 1-off quantities through legit Chinese distributors like LCSC. For example, a XC7A35T-2FGG484I is 90$ on Digikey and 20$ at LCSC. I think a personalized deal for that part would be cheaper than 20$ though...