I am new to all this FPGA-thing topic, but I know other FPGAs can be used to perform massive parallel computation tasks, like brute forcing hashes or creating rainbow tables.
My question is: is the spartan3 capable of performing such tasks?
what other uses can be the SUMP pump used for?
This is because this board seems to me like a nice entry level toy to learn FPGAs
Also, when will the other board, with SRAM will be available (rough estimates, I know is really soon to say anything yet) ad do you know an estimate price range?
Thanks in advance for the answers to this noob xD
You could use it as a general development board. It will run any BIN you upload to the ROM chip over the USB connection.
Don;t hold you breath for the SRAM board. v2 with SRAM is a big design commitment that will probably take multiple revisions, and we're not ready with the first version yet. I hope the first board will be available next month (Feb 10), another revision... 6months, a year? Depends on how it goes. No idea of the price range, but our goal is always cheap.
Maybe this is a good time to talk about some of my other FPGA projects. The FPGA portion of this project was derived from my existing FPGA development boards called the Butterfly Platform. The Sump Pump is meant to be a targeted application for the development of Test Bench hardware such as a Logic Analyzer, DSO, frequency generator etc. While the Sump Pump board can be used as a general development board I would encourage you to take a look at the available Butterflies first as they were developed and are supported with FPGA development in mind. As far as price goes, I am steadily working on bringing the price of the Cocoons down to be on par with the price of the Sump Pump.
To see all available boards visit Gadget Factory (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/products/)
Here are some of the interesting FPGA projects that are being developed at GadgetFactory:
-AVR8 Soft Processor is an AVR compatible soft processor with a gcc toolchain and scripts that allow C code to be quickly compiled and loaded onto the Butterfly hardware. More testing needs to be done with this project, I think some of the gcc compiler flags are not quite right yet. There is also a project to integrate the AVR8 processor and its toolchain into an Eclipse plugin. AVR8 Project Page (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/avr_core/)
-An Arduino Tech adapter to allow the Arduino to be used with an FPGA. This allows the FPGA to do hardware based tasks that the Arduino is not capable of. It also allows the FPGA to manage peripherals for the Arduino. The Arduino can connect to many more peripherals than it normally can through a register based interface instead of directly controlling the pins. Arduino Tech Adapter (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/bpw5001-avr/)
-Stepper Motor Wing and a VHDL core to allow register based access to the Stepper Wing. The VHDL core can be used with the soft processor, a tech adapter, or standalone HDL.
Stepper Wing Page
(http://http) Stepper VHDL Core (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/stepper_core/)
-The project that is getting most of my attention right now is a REDe (Rapid Electronics Design Environment) Multi-Peripheral Core. This is a framework to unify all of the Wings, Tech Adapters, and VHDL Cores together. This framework will allow the Arduino adapter and AVR8 Soft Processor to select which Wing Slot a Wing is attached to from within C code. The Wings can then be controlled through registers. The goal is to do a similar thing for FPGA's that Visual Basic did for programming and the Arduino did for microcontrollers. The REDe MPC is meant to greatly simplify FPGA development and allow someone to be productive on an FPGA without ever touching any VHDL or the complicated FPGA synthesis tools.
To read about the general REDe concept visit REDe Overview (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/butterfly_main/linkedapps/?linkedapp_id=5)
To look at the VHDL source code for the REDe Multi-Peripheral Core visit SVN Source Code (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/rede_mpc/scmsvn/?action=browse&path=%2Ftrunk%2FREDe_MultiPeripheral_Core%2F)
Most of these projects are still in the development/testing stages and there is a lot of room for interested people to get involved.
Jack.
Jack's Butterfly platform is a much better solution, a real dev platform. The PUMP won't have JTAG debugging, selectable voltage IO banks, or anything you really need to develop with FPGA. It's purpose-built to be the cheapest LA possible.
Does the SUMP PUMP really have no JTAG debugging? When looking at the pictures and layout, I see some JTAG headers connected to the Spartan. Is this not enough for JTAG debugging?
The Sump Pump has a JTAG port but you need a Xilinx JTAG cable to use the port. I think what Ian meant is that we do not provide a USB to JTAG connection while the Butterfly Platform boards do have that option.
Thanks for the quick reply. I've got a FT2232H module lying around here, I think it shouldn't be too hard to turn this into something which can be used by the Xilinx Webpack or OpenOCD.
So when the boards are available I plan to play around with it a bit...
You should be able to use the Butterfly Loader (http://http://www.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/butterflyloader/) with the FT2232H to load bit files from Xilinx ISE. I was never able to get OpenOCD to work with the FT2232D.
You could be the first to beta test the Buspirates support for OpenOCD :)
[quote author="ian"]
You could use it as a general development board. It will run any BIN you upload to the ROM chip over the USB connection.
Don;t hold you breath for the SRAM board. v2 with SRAM is a big design commitment that will probably take multiple revisions, and we're not ready with the first version yet. I hope the first board will be available next month (Feb 10), another revision... 6months, a year? Depends on how it goes. No idea of the price range, but our goal is always cheap.
[/quote]
As an interim, what about a version $6-10 more using the XC3S500E instead of the 250 for extra BRAM?
It appears the biggest problem with this is that 500Es in the VQ100 package seem very difficult to find...