Build your own FPGA (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Build your own FPGA (2012)

blog.notdot.net

87 pointspabs319 comments

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.

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.

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.

NANDputer lives!

http://blog.kevtris.org/?p=62

Reminds me of the "Electronic Lab" toys I had as a child https://www.petervis.com/electronics-lab/200-in-one-electron...

I remember those as a kid. Is there a modern version?

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.

"What are FPGAs?" https://www.fpga4fun.com/FPGAinfo1.html

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

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.

And eFabless have some sort of open FPGA thing.

https://github.com/efabless/clear https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30437021

Electronics Engineers: I spent weeks designing and building this ultra-difficult complicated device.

Demo: Blinky lights

Yep, blinky is the Hello, World of hardware.

The source is 10 years old. Is there a more recent approach? (e.g. Amazon FPGA instances.)

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.

eFabless have some sort of open FPGA thing.

https://github.com/efabless/clear https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30437021

Anyone know of anything similar for CGRAs?

What's a CGRA?

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

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