It looks as if microcontrollers are a dime a dozen today (and generally they actually are!), as they’re discovered within the overwhelming majority of an electronics hobbyist’s weekend initiatives. However there may be additionally one other total world on the market, for those who take some time to know it. FPGAs are reconfigurable circuits that, for sure purposes, can blow microcontrollers out of the water when it comes to efficiency — particularly in the case of working parallel operations.
Regardless of their many potential purposes, FPGAs are calmly utilized by hobbyists. That is, largely, as a result of the chips, improvement kits, and software program toolchains on the market have primarily been designed with the skilled developer in thoughts. So along with being one thing lower than user-friendly, these instruments additionally are usually on the costly facet. As such, in case you are not working with FPGAs day in and time out at work, it’s an space that may be very troublesome to leap into.
A take a look at the PCB design (📷: Chengyin Yao)
A handful of efforts have arisen through the years to construct hobbyist-friendly FPGA improvement platforms, and a few of them have been fairly good. However as somebody with a bunch of those boards in a drawer, I do know that if the mission isn’t carried out proper, the {hardware} will change into a paperweight very quickly. The newest entry into the sector comes from {hardware} hacker Chengyin Yao, who needed to construct a low-cost, easy-to-use FPGA platform that might keep away from these issues. The result’s the Icepi Zero. Whether or not it’s going to stay helpful for years to return, or be relegated to the drawer of disgrace, stays to be seen, however the system seems to be fairly promising.
As you may be capable to guess from the board’s identify, it borrows the shape issue of the Raspberry Pi Zero. However there isn’t a Broadcom SoC to be discovered on the Icepi Zero — as an alternative you’ll discover a strong Lattice ECP5U FPGA with 24K LUTs and 112 KiB of RAM. The board additionally has 256MiB of 166MHz SDRAM and 128Mbit of flash reminiscence to increase the system’s capabilities. It additionally has some good I/O choices with three USB-C ports, an HDMI output, a MicroSD card slot, and a few programmable LEDs and buttons.
An indication of the board’s HDMI output capabilities (📷: Chengyin Yao)
That is all effectively and good, however will it change into a brick in a yr or two. It doesn’t seem like it. The Icepi Zero comes geared up with a USB to JTAG converter that simplifies the method of programming the chip. Apart from that, the platform depends on well-established open supply instruments like Yosys for Verilog synthesis, nextpnr for putting and routing, and openFPGALoader for loading the bitstream.
The Icepi Zero seems to be prefer it could possibly be a winner, nevertheless, it gained’t be straightforward to get your fingers on one. Yao is just not planning to promote them presently, however you can also make your individual because the mission is absolutely open supply. If we will persuade Yao to manufacture some sooner or later, indications are that they might possible price someplace between $30 and $40.