Dangerous Prototypes Open Source Hardware

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #45 – August 09, 2012, 03:18:42 pm

@arhi: if you're not bothered by purchasing a pre-made board, you could look into the "Pipistrello": http://forum.gadgetfactory.net/index.ph ... eroids-r22 and http://pipistrello.saanlima.com/index.p ... ipistrello

Has 64MB of memory and a badass FPGA on it...

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #46 – August 09, 2012, 03:59:27 pm

That is a nice board. But no info about availability & price without sending an email to the guy. :S

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #47 – August 09, 2012, 06:13:56 pm

So I registered an account to post a link here.  Instead, I am making a post here such that in 24 hours I can come back and post said link. 

In the meantime... you guys should maybe google "silicon on inspiration"

//EDIT (by IPenguin] added the link: Silicon on inspiration Spartan 6 FPGA boards

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #48 – August 09, 2012, 06:30:23 pm

Saw that board on Xilinx magazine ads today. Looks nice, $300 is out of my budget but I'll look into the cheaper ones there to see if they are good for what I'm planning as a future project.

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #49 – August 09, 2012, 07:32:48 pm

A first Zinq-7000 based module/haiku has become available as well.

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #50 – August 10, 2012, 11:53:21 am

I'm following Jack's work closely and seen that board but I donno how committed Jack is, I see many boards, not that many documentation (some nice video examples but that's it) and look at the OBLS, it's Jack's work mainly if I understood correctly and check out when was the last revision of that board out, check out how many improvements about that board we talked about (that are easily made on the same board) and none of it went trough, so I donno if I commit to something Jack makes that will be supported in 3 months or not... and when I pay $50 support ain't that important but if I pay $300 I damn well expect it to be supported for longer then 3 months ... and by looking at this $50 device - support is lacking...

Second part is - I suck with vhdl/verilog .. I know basics, I wanna learn but hell, I have zero free time, I promised a fried to help on a project that was due to be shipped today - where I was last 10 days, in bloody Madrid handling some $#$@#% with @$%%@#% cause %@%$#%^#^ ... yeah I have good excuse not to be there for last 10 days of the product, it will really help my friend big time since he's losing that deal 80-90% .. so time is scarce having "someone" make the majority of the work and you tweaking it to suit your need is way better then working from scratch (Especially as you have no clue how to do it).. making LA from zynq haiku or jacks new papilio... requires time and knowledge .. and I have huge lack in both :(

Now I have a 3AN started board from xilinx sitting here collecting dust (got it to start learning) so I'll start porting existing core to that board ... it is similar architecture to the existing obls (except there's a memory there) so .. if I manage to do that I'll probably have enough knowledge to decide what to do next .. so far, it's just a lot of "bad ideas" ..

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #51 – August 10, 2012, 08:55:34 pm

I guess Pipistrello board that jawi mentioned is some other person's idea. It is a nice one, Jack also wanted to have sth similar, and started a Kickstarter for it, which failed as I know. The idea is kinda weird for me, putting a uC core in an FPGA and programming it seems kinda strange. I like them because they can do stuff fast & in parallel. Like edit videos real time or run processes in parallel to crack passwords (I don't do any of this stuff).

Well, I guess I'll have some time this month to dust off my Xilinx board and start learning VHDL/Verilog again. Can come in handy in the future.

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #52 – August 11, 2012, 01:30:59 am

I love them cause CPLDs and FPGAs are PCB designers heaven... Any pin anyewhere...:) I know this is oversimplifying it a lot, but I love their flexability and speeed :D

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #53 – December 09, 2012, 11:55:41 am

I saw the Papilio Pro with Spartan 6 LX9 and 64Mbit SDRAM on sale on Seedstudio for 85$ http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/-p-1301.html
I'm quite new to FPGAs but I think that porting current code to this board will be straightforward and maybe the design can be a bit cheaper with less Flash memory and a PIC uC.
Once this affordable development board is on market, will it be difficult to make OLS use the SDRAM of this board instead of embedded RAM?

Re: spartan/virtex 6 + ddr2/3 ?

Reply #54 – December 10, 2012, 08:45:11 am

I think it will be quite difficult to meld the SUMP core to a board with DDR. The timing will be a big pain, but I am not an expert on this. It will take someone very gifted in FPGA development to make this work.