4 ms·
I think this is where FPGAs might prove very useful. Even if the designs made on FPGAs are small-scale, amateurish or sub-optimal today, they will help develop
by hrjet 12y ago
I think this is where FPGAs might prove very useful. Even if the designs made on FPGAs are small-scale, amateurish or sub-optimal today, they will help develop an ecosystem of tools, including open-source tools, that will ultimately help larger-scale open-source hardware.
- wyager 12y agoThe problem with FPGAs is the design software. Have you ever tried to use WebPACK ISE or Quartus? Both of them blow. Terrible UI, terrible design, terrible licensing requirements. We need simple, easy, powerful, and free tools for FPGA development before open source FPGA cores take off.
- hrjet 12y agoI am agreeing with your first point. But I am suggesting an alternative to your second point. When FPGA boards become available to more people, the tools will automatically come. Note that, the open-source tools can be built by software professionals, even though they might be amateurs in hardware design.
- noselasd 12y agoThee's already cheap ($50 and less) FPGA boards. But all FPGAs are proprietary, there's no available documentation on the internals, the bitstream, and many other things one need to create 3.party/open source tools. And I also suspect they're hard to impossible to reverse engineer.
- DanWaterworth 12y agoHere's one attempt: https://github.com/Wolfgang-Spraul/fpgatools https://github.com/Wolfgang-Spraul/fpgatools
- ithkuil 12y agoI agree. they do have command line tools, just look at the logs, and build your makefiles.