8 ms·

Build your own FPGA

112 points by VeXocide 14y ago

easytiger 14y ago
Hmmm. did he have any indication of cost?
- rrmm 14y ago
  7400 logic is fairly cheap. the biggest cost was probably getting the boards made.
- nicksdjohnson 14y ago
  Enough parts for 20 boards cost me about 100 pounds; the board fabrication cost about $60, but a lot of that was because I wanted it in a rush. All up, that works out to about 8 pounds, or 13 USD per board. It'd be somewhat cheaper - around $10-$11 - if you're not in a rush for the boards, and of course cheaper again in larger quantities.
  - easytiger 14y ago
    Yea that's interesting. Would be interesting to see how this scales when you start including more complex components. For instance a board with a 10GigE connector or putting a clock onto the board itself.
rrmm 14y ago
Superneat project. Now someone needs to synthesize a CPU and build a big enough discrete fpga to run it (very slowly) on. A few comments for those playing at home: 1) Use less solder. When you get boards done at the pcb house, they usually put a solder mask. There is enough solder on the pads that you can solder SMD parts without adding more. Just flux it with a fluxpen, lay the part on top, and remelt it. Much neater and much faster. You just have to check that there is actually enough solder on the pad to make a solid joint (a light and a magnifier help to verify). 2) Always clean the flux off, even if it's no-clean. 3) Autorouters produce less than ideal results. If you start with an autorouter pass, you can then go back and tear up lines and reposition parts to use fewer vias and straighter lines. When I first started doing pcbs I wanted to use autorouters, but the results were always ugly. I met a guy who had done a 6-layer ARM board in some old DOS program manually which convinced me it probably wasn't that big of a deal to route by hand. It's calming if nothing else.
- nicksdjohnson 14y ago
  I probably overdid the solder a bit, but there's no way most of the pads had enough solder on them for SOICs without my adding any. I've soldered SOICs before, but this is by far the largest volume I've done in a sitting. As I mentioned briefly in the post, the autorouter was something I used largely as a result of time constraints - with 200-odd wires to route and very little time to do them in if I wanted the PCBs back in time, I decided to give it a go. That said, I was surprised with the quality of the results - I'd be surprised if I can find any easy-to-remove vias left in its solution. The tool is also very good for assisted hand routing, since it lets you nudge traces around without ripping them up every time.
  - rrmm 14y ago
    I understand; I'm just back-seating anyway. Where did you get the boards done? Also, do you have any idea how fast the counter you made can go?
    - nicksdjohnson 14y ago
      I got them done at Hackvana (hackvana.com, or #hackvana on irc.freenode.net); similar prices to Seeed, and excellent customer service. I'm not sure about the maximum speed. The flipflop, for instance, has a delay of 14ns; if we take that as average, each slice has to go through 5 parts (input mux, LUT, flipflop, async select mux, output enable) for a total delay of 70ns, so in theory one slice could do about 14MHz. Since it's a ripple counter, I guess we should divide that by the number of slices, so 4MHz seems like a reasonable upper bound.
      - rrmm 14y ago
        It's a really outstanding project. Thanks for sharing it with everyone. Regarding configuration memory, could you have the arduino read out from a serial flash? They're pretty easy to bit bang or control over SPI, and you can get a 64Mb pretty easily.
        14y ago
bitcracker 14y ago
This is the first step to true open hardware. I am concerned how fast IT evolves to DRM-locked devices. The PC will become obsolete by tablets so we will lose control over our computers. Currently DRM looks harmless but when you consider the long-term consequences it doesn't look good at all. First we fought TCPA and Trusted Computing, now we have the first global players (Apple, Microsoft) put DRM into their gadgets to get maximum control and minimum competition. And the customers buy, consume, and play, without considering the consequences. Our technology today is the foundation for the political systems of tomorrow, and when you consider the global demographic development you know what I mean. Within the next twenty years we will have a completely different global political and economical system, and I don't want to have them total control over us with their super-safe cascaded DRM chips which nobody will be able to break. Unfortunately we can't stop Apple, Microsoft & Co. from using DRM. That's why I appreciate pioneer projects like this selfmade FPGA very much as they help to jump over the big hurdle from open source to true open hardware. Someday when all commercial chips will be DRM-locked I hope we will be able to 3D-print our own processors and RAM chips. I am convinced that Open Hardware will become vital for the survival of our freedom of speech and liberty in general.
- zokier 14y ago
  This is the first step to true open hardware?! You are not a hardware guy, are you?
  - bitcracker 14y ago
    I know that there are several open hardware projects (Opencores for instance). But I consider _true_ open hardware as hardware were we always will have _full_ control over _every_ tiny detail of the system. The TTL level is the right foundation for that. If we could go down to the NMOS level or so for 3D printing, that would be even better. We'll see what the future shows.
    - ballooney 14y ago
      You've been able to build your own hardware from 74xx series chips for decades now, infact about half a century! Infact, that was the only option you had back in the day. This is retro rather than new, like making a ham radio out of thermionic valves, say. Nothing new, but kinda cool and certainly educational if you're new to the field. I think that's why the GP took objection to your rather statesmanly proclamation that this was heralding some kind of revolution in open hardware. It isn't, it's just a rather neat project. However, in your followup comment I definitely agree with you in that as soon as I can fab my own silicon in my garage, the world will be my mollusc. But we're pretty close nowadays with a $20 FPGA from digikey.
OldSchool 14y ago
Kudos. Just plain awesome and so recursively witty.
aortega 14y ago
This is what I like about FPGAs and soft-cpus. Some "open-hardware" designs use ARM cpus, that are as closed and patented as they can be (I.E. Arduino, Raspberry PI, etc.) You may argue that commercial FPGAs are also closed and while it's true, the principle of operation is so simple (lots of interconnected gates) that can be easily replicated, like this cool project shows.
- zokier 14y ago
  > You may argue that commercial FPGAs are also closed and while it's true, the principle of operation is so simple (lots of interconnected gates) that can be easily replicated, like this cool project shows. Basic CPUs are not all that complex either, there are plenty of homebrew CPU projects made of discrete components. Both those and this project share the common trait that they are almost impossible to scale up to be useful. I would also be very surprised if FPGAs aren't also heavily patented.
sh_vipin 14y ago
Nothing to discourage the efforts here but close to 10 companies were closed which tried to enter in FPGA market in last 10 years alone. Here is the list : TierLogic , CSwitch, Ambric, MathStar, Agate Logic, Nusym, AboundLogic (M2000) Only one successful acquisiton. Lattice acquired --> Silicon Blue In the past, ST Micro tried 2 times to enter in FPGA Market, once even with the "open Source " concept - GOSPL. Intel for once for sure. Other several companies failed too. Xilinx and Altera hold close to 90% market share in FPGA market. 90% of other efforts to enter this market have failed earlier. Mostly because, companies underestimated Software importance.
- sh_vipin 14y ago
  Even the best in hardware making failed because they underestimated the software. Investor sentiment for FPGAs is so low for these obvious reasons.
- sh_vipin 14y ago
  Moreover, Mobile Apps industry has paid out close to $6B in last 4-5 years. The revenue of whole EDA industry is $6-8 billion USD , though annually. Over that entry barrier is so high in programmable logic industry that , making en effort in this direction makes it less viable option.
- ippisl 14y ago
  Even the lattice acquisition was a small one , the VC's made no profit on it.
  - sh_vipin 14y ago
    Exactly !! So i would say FPGA research as an academic project is a good idea but as a viable business has many challenges.

Build your own FPGA

112 points by VeXocide 14y ago

easytiger 14y ago

Hmmm. did he have any indication of cost?

rrmm 14y ago
7400 logic is fairly cheap. the biggest cost was probably getting the boards made.
nicksdjohnson 14y ago
Enough parts for 20 boards cost me about 100 pounds; the board fabrication cost about $60, but a lot of that was because I wanted it in a rush. All up, that works out to about 8 pounds, or 13 USD per board. It'd be somewhat cheaper - around $10-$11 - if you're not in a rush for the boards, and of course cheaper again in larger quantities.
- easytiger 14y ago
  Yea that's interesting. Would be interesting to see how this scales when you start including more complex components. For instance a board with a 10GigE connector or putting a clock onto the board itself.

rrmm 14y ago

Superneat project. Now someone needs to synthesize a CPU and build a big enough discrete fpga to run it (very slowly) on. A few comments for those playing at home: 1) Use less solder. When you get boards done at the pcb house, they usually put a solder mask. There is enough solder on the pads that you can solder SMD parts without adding more. Just flux it with a fluxpen, lay the part on top, and remelt it. Much neater and much faster. You just have to check that there is actually enough solder on the pad to make a solid joint (a light and a magnifier help to verify). 2) Always clean the flux off, even if it's no-clean. 3) Autorouters produce less than ideal results. If you start with an autorouter pass, you can then go back and tear up lines and reposition parts to use fewer vias and straighter lines. When I first started doing pcbs I wanted to use autorouters, but the results were always ugly. I met a guy who had done a 6-layer ARM board in some old DOS program manually which convinced me it probably wasn't that big of a deal to route by hand. It's calming if nothing else.

nicksdjohnson 14y ago
I probably overdid the solder a bit, but there's no way most of the pads had enough solder on them for SOICs without my adding any. I've soldered SOICs before, but this is by far the largest volume I've done in a sitting. As I mentioned briefly in the post, the autorouter was something I used largely as a result of time constraints - with 200-odd wires to route and very little time to do them in if I wanted the PCBs back in time, I decided to give it a go. That said, I was surprised with the quality of the results - I'd be surprised if I can find any easy-to-remove vias left in its solution. The tool is also very good for assisted hand routing, since it lets you nudge traces around without ripping them up every time.
- rrmm 14y ago
  I understand; I'm just back-seating anyway. Where did you get the boards done? Also, do you have any idea how fast the counter you made can go?
  - nicksdjohnson 14y ago
    I got them done at Hackvana (hackvana.com, or #hackvana on irc.freenode.net); similar prices to Seeed, and excellent customer service. I'm not sure about the maximum speed. The flipflop, for instance, has a delay of 14ns; if we take that as average, each slice has to go through 5 parts (input mux, LUT, flipflop, async select mux, output enable) for a total delay of 70ns, so in theory one slice could do about 14MHz. Since it's a ripple counter, I guess we should divide that by the number of slices, so 4MHz seems like a reasonable upper bound.
    - rrmm 14y ago
      It's a really outstanding project. Thanks for sharing it with everyone. Regarding configuration memory, could you have the arduino read out from a serial flash? They're pretty easy to bit bang or control over SPI, and you can get a 64Mb pretty easily.
      - 14y ago

bitcracker 14y ago

This is the first step to true open hardware. I am concerned how fast IT evolves to DRM-locked devices. The PC will become obsolete by tablets so we will lose control over our computers. Currently DRM looks harmless but when you consider the long-term consequences it doesn't look good at all. First we fought TCPA and Trusted Computing, now we have the first global players (Apple, Microsoft) put DRM into their gadgets to get maximum control and minimum competition. And the customers buy, consume, and play, without considering the consequences. Our technology today is the foundation for the political systems of tomorrow, and when you consider the global demographic development you know what I mean. Within the next twenty years we will have a completely different global political and economical system, and I don't want to have them total control over us with their super-safe cascaded DRM chips which nobody will be able to break. Unfortunately we can't stop Apple, Microsoft & Co. from using DRM. That's why I appreciate pioneer projects like this selfmade FPGA very much as they help to jump over the big hurdle from open source to true open hardware. Someday when all commercial chips will be DRM-locked I hope we will be able to 3D-print our own processors and RAM chips. I am convinced that Open Hardware will become vital for the survival of our freedom of speech and liberty in general.

zokier 14y ago
This is the first step to true open hardware?! You are not a hardware guy, are you?
- bitcracker 14y ago
  I know that there are several open hardware projects (Opencores for instance). But I consider _true_ open hardware as hardware were we always will have _full_ control over _every_ tiny detail of the system. The TTL level is the right foundation for that. If we could go down to the NMOS level or so for 3D printing, that would be even better. We'll see what the future shows.
  - ballooney 14y ago
    You've been able to build your own hardware from 74xx series chips for decades now, infact about half a century! Infact, that was the only option you had back in the day. This is retro rather than new, like making a ham radio out of thermionic valves, say. Nothing new, but kinda cool and certainly educational if you're new to the field. I think that's why the GP took objection to your rather statesmanly proclamation that this was heralding some kind of revolution in open hardware. It isn't, it's just a rather neat project. However, in your followup comment I definitely agree with you in that as soon as I can fab my own silicon in my garage, the world will be my mollusc. But we're pretty close nowadays with a $20 FPGA from digikey.

OldSchool 14y ago

Kudos. Just plain awesome and so recursively witty.

aortega 14y ago

This is what I like about FPGAs and soft-cpus. Some "open-hardware" designs use ARM cpus, that are as closed and patented as they can be (I.E. Arduino, Raspberry PI, etc.) You may argue that commercial FPGAs are also closed and while it's true, the principle of operation is so simple (lots of interconnected gates) that can be easily replicated, like this cool project shows.

zokier 14y ago
> You may argue that commercial FPGAs are also closed and while it's true, the principle of operation is so simple (lots of interconnected gates) that can be easily replicated, like this cool project shows. Basic CPUs are not all that complex either, there are plenty of homebrew CPU projects made of discrete components. Both those and this project share the common trait that they are almost impossible to scale up to be useful. I would also be very surprised if FPGAs aren't also heavily patented.

sh_vipin 14y ago

Nothing to discourage the efforts here but close to 10 companies were closed which tried to enter in FPGA market in last 10 years alone. Here is the list : TierLogic , CSwitch, Ambric, MathStar, Agate Logic, Nusym, AboundLogic (M2000) Only one successful acquisiton. Lattice acquired --> Silicon Blue In the past, ST Micro tried 2 times to enter in FPGA Market, once even with the "open Source " concept - GOSPL. Intel for once for sure. Other several companies failed too. Xilinx and Altera hold close to 90% market share in FPGA market. 90% of other efforts to enter this market have failed earlier. Mostly because, companies underestimated Software importance.

sh_vipin 14y ago
Even the best in hardware making failed because they underestimated the software. Investor sentiment for FPGAs is so low for these obvious reasons.
sh_vipin 14y ago
Moreover, Mobile Apps industry has paid out close to $6B in last 4-5 years. The revenue of whole EDA industry is $6-8 billion USD , though annually. Over that entry barrier is so high in programmable logic industry that , making en effort in this direction makes it less viable option.
ippisl 14y ago
Even the lattice acquisition was a small one , the VC's made no profit on it.
- sh_vipin 14y ago
  Exactly !! So i would say FPGA research as an academic project is a good idea but as a viable business has many challenges.