(Replying to PARENT post)

The other problem with using an FPGA here is that microcontrollers are cheap and have great cheap dev boards. FPGAs, not so much. I've wanted to just "drop in" a small FPGA in several designs, the way you can drop in a microcontroller, but there's no available FPGA that's not a massive headache in that use case. Trust me, I've looked.

The iCE40 series is almost there but not quite. It's a bit pricey (this is sometimes okay, sometimes a dealbreaker) but its care and feeding is too annoying. Who wants to source a separate configuration memory? Sometimes I don't have the space for that crap.

If any company can bring a small, cheap, low power FPGA to the market, preferably with onboard non-volatile configuration memory, a microcontroller-like peripheral mix (UART, I2C, SPI, etc.), easy configuration (re)loading, and with good tool and dev board support, they'll sell a lot of units. They don't even have to be fast!

👤exmadscientist🕑5y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

The MiniZED is $89 and a ton of fun! It has an ARM processor (Xilinx Zynq XC7Z007S SoC), Arduino compatible daughterboard connectors, microcontroller-like peripheral mix, and runs linux.

http://zedboard.org/product/minized

https://www.avnet.com/shop/us/products/avnet-engineering-ser...

Oh, and Vivado (the FPGA development IDE) is free (as in beer) for that FPGA as well as Xilinx' other mid to low end FPGAs.

👤gvb🕑5y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

In my last project, I just big-banged a port to load up the configuration bits in a 4K iCE40, something like 131KBytes; this was just a .h file that was included in the bit-banger; the static array ended up in Flash (the ST MPU had 2 MB flash, so no problem), and it only took a second or so to load the FPGA bits before it was ready-to-go. So, from my perspective, what you describe is already here. If even that's too much trouble, there's always TinyFPGA BX https://tinyfpga.com/ You can use the open source yosys or you can use Synplify and the Lattice dev system, which is free w/free license.
👤GeorgeTirebiter🕑5y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Crowd Supply has an endless variety of hobbyist-friendly variously FPGA / USB / MCU / PCIE / SDR combination boards.

It's ridiculous for anybody to insist that programming an FPGA isn't writing software. By definition, anything you can put in a text file that ends up controlling what some piece of hardware does is software. Probably almost all of what is wrong with FPGA ecosystems comes from failure to treat it like software.

It's not much like your typical C program, but that's a very parochial viewpoint. The languages available to program FPGAs in are abysmal, a poor match to the hardware: actually too much like ordinary programming languages, to their detriment. A person who makes an FPGA do something is going to be an engineer, and to an engineer any microprocessor and any FPGA are just two different state machines. Somebody who studied "computer science" will be disoriented, but that is just because the field has narrowed, as network effects pared down the field of computing substrates until practically nothing is left.

FPGAs emulating ASICs or von Neumann CPUs is the greatest waste of potential anywhere. If the architecture of (some) FPGAs could be elucidated, it could fuel a renaissance of programming formalisms. We could begin program them in a language actually well-suited to the task, and vary their configuration in real time according to the instantaneous task at hand.

👤ncmncm🕑5y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

Gowin might just fill this niche. They are working with yosys on open source support as well.

https://www.gowinsemi.com/en/product/detail/2/

http://www.clifford.at/yosys/cmd_synth_gowin.html

👤jburgess777🕑5y🔼0🗨️0

(Replying to PARENT post)

I think Cypress had a product line that combined a CPU and a small programmable array, just big enough to implement your own custom IO and protocols and maybe some minimal logic beyond that.

Maybe that's what most hobbyists need?

👤panpanna🕑5y🔼0🗨️0