Comments on: A fun hack: iPad to FPGA data-passing Moar! Moar!

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By: Dr.No/2011/02/15/a-fun-hack-ipad-to-fpga-data-passing/#comment-842 Dr.No Thu, 17 Feb 2011 07:10:54 +0000 FPGAs are a fascinating subject and can completely warp your mind in terms of what software is in relation to hardware, and how devs often just look at a single dimension view of optimization (cycle-counting, pipelining vs. gate propogation). Started with a Digilent (Basys2) but hated being forced to use Windows and Digilent's simple tool to upload/test designs rather than directly within Xilinx WebPack. I did find uploading USBID-patched firmware for the Cypress USB-serial chip was all that was needed to get working on WebPack/Linux but have since moved to more Linux-friendly Xilinx/Altera kits. I suppose the situation is better by now. My favorite kit is Technologic Systems TS-7300. It's a cute little board with a 200MHz ARM9 and Altera FPGA, each control own set of peripherals (ethernet, SD card, RAM, USB..). The FPGA drives a 2nd ethernet port, 2nd SD card, number of com and GPIOs, and VGA port (8mb dedicated RAM, design includes simple blitter modeled on Atari STEs). The ARM side boots Debian Linux then quickly uploads a bitstream to start the FPGA side. There aren't too many FPGA boards designed like this. Verilog source for the FPGA (save VGA support) was open-sourced and placed on OpenCores. ARM9 takes forever to boot up but otherwise it's a good self-contained kit for creating things like this. The FPGA is memory-mapped to the ARM and fully programmable in a few 100ms. On the downside, no standard JTAG port. FPGAs are a fascinating subject and can completely warp your mind in terms of what software is in relation to hardware, and how devs often just look at a single dimension view of optimization (cycle-counting, pipelining vs. gate propogation).

Started with a Digilent (Basys2) but hated being forced to use Windows and Digilent’s simple tool to upload/test designs rather than directly within Xilinx WebPack. I did find uploading USBID-patched firmware for the Cypress USB-serial chip was all that was needed to get working on WebPack/Linux but have since moved to more Linux-friendly Xilinx/Altera kits. I suppose the situation is better by now.

My favorite kit is Technologic Systems TS-7300. It’s a cute little board with a 200MHz ARM9 and Altera FPGA, each control own set of peripherals (ethernet, SD card, RAM, USB..). The FPGA drives a 2nd ethernet port, 2nd SD card, number of com and GPIOs, and VGA port (8mb dedicated RAM, design includes simple blitter modeled on Atari STEs). The ARM side boots Debian Linux then quickly uploads a bitstream to start the FPGA side. There aren’t too many FPGA boards designed like this.

Verilog source for the FPGA (save VGA support) was open-sourced and placed on OpenCores. ARM9 takes forever to boot up but otherwise it’s a good self-contained kit for creating things like this. The FPGA is memory-mapped to the ARM and fully programmable in a few 100ms. On the downside, no standard JTAG port.

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By: Glenn Watson/2011/02/15/a-fun-hack-ipad-to-fpga-data-passing/#comment-782 Glenn Watson Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:11:19 +0000 [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Julien Hamaide and Steven Tovey, ianslayer. ianslayer said: RT @mike_acton: #AltDevBlogADay A fun hack: iPad to FPGA data-passing