Jack Gassett is developing an open source project to build an Arduino Shield with a Xilinx Spartan 3A or Spartan 6 FPGA. The shield will provide the ability to program the FPGA from the Arduino. To illustrate the project’s potential, an example of an open source software core for the FPGA will also be developed (probably a VGA controller.)
He writes:
The Papilio FPGA Shield is an exciting new project conceived of by the co-designer of the popular OpenBench Logic Sniffer. The Papilio FPGA Shield will allow Arduino users to tap into the amazing power of an FPGA without doing anything differently then they already do! How will this work? The Papilio FPGA Shield will plug into the Arduino just like any other shield, but once plugged in a Wishbone bridge will provide access to “Papilio Community Cores” running inside the FPGA. “Papilio Community Cores’ will include Arduino libraries that will make it a breeze to use and interact with cores on the FPGA. The end result, Arduino users will add a library to their sketch and interact with it just like they always have, but behind the scenes their sketches will be driving fast, highly parallel hardware running inside an FPGA.
More information on the Papilio FPGA shield can be found on the project’s Kickstarter page.
Interesting project. Reminds me a bit of the Amani 64, an Altera CPLD shield for the Arduino.
Amani/Kemani is CPLD, this one is going to be a real beast with Spartan 3A FPGA. Many many times more powerful (like 4032 cells vs. 64 cells).
I just bought a Papilio and am learning a little bit about VHDLwith it. Pretty impressive that you can use the Arduino IDE to download an AVR processor softcore AND the Arduino software to run on it. Will be nice to have it in an Arduino mother/daughter shield format. Any thoughts on supporting the Python MyHDL tool?
Cor that’s cool it looks like an ‘Alien Cortex’
Is this project ready ?
FPGA has numerous uses…can it be REflashed?