Hacker News Reader

Comment by voltagex_ | Hacker News Reader

What happens when the DE10 Nanos run out?

Hopefully terasic will keep making them for a good while and when they do retire them have a replacement.

It's not as simple as just develop a new board as the DE10 Nano offers a great price / performance ratio. There are more capable FPGA boards out there but they're also more expensive. Any purpose developed board would also likely cost more.

Amazon.com: DE10-Nano Kit

  Currently unavailable.
  We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.

Also, on Mouser:

  Stock: 0
  On Order: 2,877 Expected 1/28/2022
  Factory Lead-Time: 48 Weeks
  Long lead time reported on this product.

ooh glad I squirrelled 2 of them away pre-COVID

I believe they already have, at least interntionally.

Presumably it gets ported to another architecture.

Or, simpler, somebody comes up with a OSHW board that's actually fit for purpose, rather than leverage a generic devboard.

https://rmcretro.store/multisystem-board-only/ Seems like a good start

That still needs a dev board mounted on it.

There are lots of boards being designed, some of which have been open, but they tend to be expensive because of the small runs.

The open cores tends to end up ported to multiple platforms over time.

Is that simpler? Dev boards are a dime a dozen, and far from everyone who wants to use FPGAs to mimic game consoles wants (or can) solder them themselves... I feel like if this platform runs out, people will mostly switch to another generic one with not too much effort.

By now, I would dare say miSTer has enough traction that a custom board would make sense.

As a reminder, few people use bare DE10-Nano. It is generally used together with custom boards for RAM and I/Os, designed for miSTer use.

There's nothing magical about FPGAs or SMD as to prevent a main board designed for the purpose.

Is there any upside to replacing it with an ASIC specifically for miSTer?

I can't think of any, relative to a FPGA. MiSTer cores are regularly upgraded; an ASIC would defeat the point.

What's being proposed is a board that's designed for miSTer. Such a board would include an appropriate FPGA, alongside memory, a better cooling solution and ports useful for miSTer use.

These are currently accomplished via mods/addons to the generic devboard, which is far from ideal.

More downsides I'd say, the point of the FPGA is that you can always replace and update the cores according to what you need any given moment, just "download your game console" essentially. Physically swapping hard ASICs isn't as convenient. :)

Electrical engineers are cheap. Porting to a slightly different layout can be easily crowdfunded.

I've been hoping it somehow ends up available for pano logic client devices. No idea how big a project that be but it would be pretty cool since there are a reasonable number of them out there, they are kinda cheap, and are already in a nice case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com