[HN Gopher] Build your own FPGA (2012)
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Build your own FPGA (2012)
Author : pabs3
Score : 78 points
Date : 2022-05-30 09:19 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.notdot.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.notdot.net)
| jbaczuk wrote:
| Electronics Engineers: I spent weeks designing and building this
| ultra-difficult complicated device.
|
| Demo: Blinky lights
| auxym wrote:
| Yep, blinky is the Hello, World of hardware.
| _tom_ wrote:
| The source is 10 years old. Is there a more recent approach?
| (e.g. Amazon FPGA instances.)
| anfractuosity wrote:
| You might find this interesting:
|
| ZUMA: An Open FPGA Overlay Architecture -
| https://www.cse.wustl.edu/~roger/565M.f12/4699a093.pdf
|
| To run an FPGA on an FPGA.
| nickpsecurity wrote:
| There's also Archipelago:
|
| https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2014/EECS-2014-...
|
| Someone could mix a version of that with the open-source RISC-V
| IP for an open CPU/FPGA combo.
| rpmuller wrote:
| Anyone know of anything similar for CGRAs?
| proto_lambda wrote:
| What's a CGRA?
| rpmuller wrote:
| Course-Grained Reconfigurable Architecture [1], like an FPGA
| but with more robust logic units. Something I'd like to learn
| more about.
|
| [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.04509
| jstanley wrote:
| I sometimes think it would be fun to build a big board with just
| a load of NAND gates on it, with power connected up on the PCB,
| but inputs/outputs going to banana plug jacks. You then wire up
| your logic with patch cables, a bit like modular synthesizers.
| misnome wrote:
| Reminds me of the "Electronic Lab" toys I had as a child
| https://www.petervis.com/electronics-lab/200-in-one-electron...
| blaiseofglory wrote:
| I remember those as a kid. Is there a modern version?
| buescher wrote:
| Yes. Elenco still sells basically the same thing if that's
| what you want. The competition seems to be something called
| "snap circuits" which is way too after my time for me to
| have an opinion about. Adults and teenagers can learn to
| build things from parts on perfboard or dead-bug style or
| if you must, on solderless breadboards. Or if you want to
| get into microcontrollers, you can buy humungous kits of
| the sort of stuff you might want to hook up to an Arduino
| for shockingly little money off aliexpress/ebay/amazon.
| [deleted]
| belter wrote:
| NANDputer lives!
|
| http://blog.kevtris.org/?p=62
| zw123456 wrote:
| This reminds me when I first started getting into FPGA's... a
| looong time ago. I to code verilog by using this cool feature in
| Quartus, which was the design software for then Altera FPGA's
| (now Intel). It had this feature where you could draw a schematic
| using 7400 logic and it would turn that into the rbf file to
| config the FPGA. I just thought that was so cool at the time and
| it was a nice entre into that world.
|
| Later, I got curious, and it had feature to output the 7400
| schematics to verilog HDL code. I became very interested in that
| and eventually learned verilog from the schematic capture and
| some online tutorials. It wasn't long and I left schematic
| capture behind. But I thought it was a great way to get into HDL
| coding.
| MisterTea wrote:
| I started playing with FPGA's while in uni (on my own) when I
| found out NI's Multisim had the option to export your logic
| circuits as vhdl. So I used my student email to get a copy of
| Multisim and get a discount on a Digilent Nexus 2. I was
| drawing logic circuits and then running them on my board. I was
| having a lot of fun with it but focus shifted and haven't
| touched FPGA's since.
| nayuki wrote:
| "What are FPGAs?" https://www.fpga4fun.com/FPGAinfo1.html
| mokus wrote:
| This makes me wonder if there might be a project out there that
| can compile Verilog to a schematic or netlist for 74-series
| logic.
|
| Edit: unsurprisingly, the answer is yes -
| http://pepijndevos.nl/2019/07/18/vhdl-to-pcb.html
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