What could you do with an array of 15 FPGAs? Why not attack hashes! NSA@home is a fast FPGA-based SHA-1 and MD5 bruteforce cracker. It is capable of searching the full 8-character keyspace (from a 64-character set) in about a day in the current configuration for 800 hashes concurrently, using about 240W of power. The […]
Tag Archives: FPGA
Falling sand game on FPGA
Skyler Schneider at Cornell University has produced a very comprehensive description of a falling sand game project using an Altera Cyclone II on the DE2 dev board. The Verilog source code listings demonstrate the level of coding required to produce dynamic video representations in a gaming environment. Via Hack a Day. Schneider’s project is a […]
Arduino on an FPGA
Talk about going full circle! Gadget Factory has coded an Arduino core into a Spartan 3E on the FPGA ButterFly platform. This expands your prototyping opportunities, and provides beginners with a familiar FPGA core to build on. Via Embedds.com
Future of FPGAs and SoC
Kevin Morris of FPGAJournal discusses the future of FPGAs and SoC (System On Chip) and why it may be a good idea to put peanut butter on our fabric.
ZX Spectrum on FPGA
robots has been up to some fun FPGA hacking. He implemented a ZX Spectrum classic computer using the ZX Gate open source project: So i had this sparkfun FPGA board laying around. I needed to build some ram and interface boards to make it work. In mean time (while gathering all the ideas), my friend […]
Small CPU core on a FPGA
Here is the paper James Bowman presented at EuroForth 2010 detailing his project to build a small 16-bit CPU core Forth machine on a Xilinx FPGA. This 200 lines of Verilog code could be helpful to anyone studying FPGA project design. Via Hack a Day
Implementation of DES algorithm using FPGA technology
Arnaud Lagger has published some interesting work on the use of FPGAs in encryption. Unlike other docs we’ve seen, this analysis is both comprehensive and detailed, including an appendix with the VHDL source code. Definitely worth the read for anyone interested in encryption using FPGAs.
Logic Sniffer upgrade v2.1 released
Package v2.1 is the first official upgrade release for the Logic Sniffer. Download it now at the Gadget Factory. This version has a lot of updates that should fix a bunch of problems in the initial release: FPGA bitstream v2.1 with high-speed SPI connection between the PIC and FPGA. This eliminates most ‘hardware not found’ […]
Logic Sniffer upgrade procedure
This is an old version, see the latest version on the documentation wiki. The Logic Sniffer is an open source logic analyzer. It’s designed to support the SUMP logic analyzer software at the lowest possible cost. This project is a collaboration between the Gadget Factory and Dangerous Prototypes. The Logic Sniffer has two parts that […]
“Logic Analyzer in a Day” Experts’ Challenge
Development board manufacturer Opal Kelly has invited three FPGA experts to design logic analyzers. Each participant has 8 to 10 hours to complete a design, the final designs will be posted online. The analyzer will be built with Opal Kelly’s modules and software development kit, but there might be some interesting takes on a common […]
Arduino implemented on FPGA
The Gadget Factory, our partner on the Open Logic Sniffer, implemented the Arduino using an FPGA. It’s based on the AVR8 soft processor Jack developed previously for the Butterfly Platform. The Butterfly Platform is a rapid prototyping board that gets you going on FPGA projects in no time, and now you can implement things in […]
Open source logic analyzer update
Development of the open source logic analyzer, first discussed here, has progressed rapidly in the forum. We’ve looked at cost estimates, Uwe made some excellent block diagrams, and Jack has already added a basic layout to his SVN. Read our goals and specs after the break.
Open source logic analyzer development
We’re really excited to be joined by Jack Gassett, developer of the Butterfly FPGA platform, to prototype an open source, high-speed, low-cost logic analyzer. This effort grew out of a bunch of great comments on a post about open source logic analyzer clients. Share your ideas for the logic analyzer in the new ‘SUMP PUMP’ […]
$49 FPGA development board
Field programmable gate arrays often separate the professionals from the hobbyists. Development tools are expensive, and the chips are usually in high pin-count BGA surface mount packages. Totti turned us on to a $49 Spartan-3A FPGA development kit from AVNET. It’s got a large Xilinx Spartan FPGA, two types of flash memory, and four capacitive […]