3 ms·

Now I'm recalling, there are also cheap ready PCIe FPGA based products but for video recording: - Spartan 6 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/

Now I'm recalling, there are also cheap ready PCIe FPGA based products but for video recording: - Spartan 6 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-29 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs... - Artix https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-35 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs... - Artix https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-38 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs... - Artix https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs/W-DLK-39 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink/techspecs...

KeplerBoy 2y ago
These seem to be ready made products opposed to devkits. Can the FPGAs be easily reprogrammed?
- tadfisher 2y ago
  FPGAs usually need their bitstream (analogous to firmware) loaded after power-on, so either there is a flash chip on the device that contains it, or it is loaded over the PCI bus from the host machine via a software driver. Either way you'll likely need to reverse-engineer and modify the firmware and host-side device driver. There are often better choices, such as dev boards, to play around with FPGAs.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  In general, the SRAM based units have a asic boot loader that may often be reconfigured with external pin logic. i.e. the chip configuration may be pulled from internal flash memory, sdcard, and external spi flash. Most designs I see place external spi flash chips next to the fpga, and the JTAG header in some convenient location. While some modern high-performance fpga chips may have internal flash and an asic cpu... the configuration can generally still be updated with relative ease. Notably, there are some exceptions where some chips may have fuses blown to lock it down, or were substituted with a One Time Programmable chip variant in production. All that aside, the IP license to make it work will likely be unavailable for free, and high-speed/lvds layout is a black art requiring some pricey equipment to get clean performance. One is often better off getting an overpriced xilinx PCIe development kit from a vendor, as most of the basic IP issues are solved... and one may focus on your core application. Reverse engineering high-speed boards are way more work than most folks could imagine. Best regards, =3
  - KeplerBoy 2y ago
    Thanks for the elaborate answer. I appreciate it.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      The signal-to-noise ratio on the modern web makes these kind of summaries elusive to find unless you are reading chip app notes regularly. Cheers, =3

KeplerBoy 2y ago

These seem to be ready made products opposed to devkits. Can the FPGAs be easily reprogrammed?

tadfisher 2y ago
FPGAs usually need their bitstream (analogous to firmware) loaded after power-on, so either there is a flash chip on the device that contains it, or it is loaded over the PCI bus from the host machine via a software driver. Either way you'll likely need to reverse-engineer and modify the firmware and host-side device driver. There are often better choices, such as dev boards, to play around with FPGAs.
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
In general, the SRAM based units have a asic boot loader that may often be reconfigured with external pin logic. i.e. the chip configuration may be pulled from internal flash memory, sdcard, and external spi flash. Most designs I see place external spi flash chips next to the fpga, and the JTAG header in some convenient location. While some modern high-performance fpga chips may have internal flash and an asic cpu... the configuration can generally still be updated with relative ease. Notably, there are some exceptions where some chips may have fuses blown to lock it down, or were substituted with a One Time Programmable chip variant in production. All that aside, the IP license to make it work will likely be unavailable for free, and high-speed/lvds layout is a black art requiring some pricey equipment to get clean performance. One is often better off getting an overpriced xilinx PCIe development kit from a vendor, as most of the basic IP issues are solved... and one may focus on your core application. Reverse engineering high-speed boards are way more work than most folks could imagine. Best regards, =3
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Thanks for the elaborate answer. I appreciate it.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    The signal-to-noise ratio on the modern web makes these kind of summaries elusive to find unless you are reading chip app notes regularly. Cheers, =3