Lattice Semiconductor Corporation and UBM Electronics have announced the Lattice “Do-it-All PLD” Design Challenge. The objective of the Design Challenge is to foster a social community in which electronics engineering contestants can use the Lattice MachXO2™ Pico Development Kit to create designs for evaluation by a panel of expert judges.
The Design Challenge will take place in three phases: Conceptual Design, Design, and Voting. Judges will choose up to 15 semifinalists in phase one and then up to five finalists in phase two. Each semifinalist will receive a free Pico Development Kit, a $49 value. Social community members will then vote for the Grand Prize Winner, who will be awarded $3,000. Each registered community member who participates in the Voting phase will be eligible to win at random one of ten $100 prizes.
The first phase entry deadline is July 18, 2011 at 8 a.m. EDT. Visit the Lattice PLD Challenge website for rules and registration information.
Would be fun, but too bad it isn’t in a package mortals can solder onto a 2-layer board.
It comes in a 100-pin TQFP that you could hand-solder, as well as a bunch of BGA packages that you can’t.
I was excited about this contest for 10 minutes, until I looked deeper into what’s involved, and what the prizes are. You’re probably going to spend a month of time designing and building some cool device, and explaining why the MachXO2 is the perfect solution for it, for $100 if you’re lucky enough to be a semi-finalist. If you’re the overall winner you get $3000, but otherwise you’re basically doing the work of a Lattice technical marketing engineer for 60 cents an hour. No thanks.
No hand soldering needed as I read it. The contest is for designs “using the Lattice MachXO2 Pico Development Kit”. Ok, you may have to solder header pins on the Pico board, but that’s it.