<daveshah>
Don't think there Spartan 7 support is complete
<daveshah>
A few people have looked at it but I don't think it is in upstream xray or finished
<catphish>
(initial) support for xc7a50t seemed to be a headline feature, so i was hoping there might be something for s7 too
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<HackerFoo>
catphish: The biggest problem is that the version of Vivado that is currently compatible with prjxray (2017.2) doesn't support Spartan 7, so most of the work is handling the lack of some functionality that was removed after 2017.2 (from my understanding.)
<catphish>
HackerFoo: i see, that's a shame, thanks
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<catphish>
i might play with are there any chips that are fully supported by symbiflow?
<catphish>
ah, just found the status page, and list of supported boards!
<HackerFoo>
xc7a35t/xc7a50t is the best supported, but there is work on 100t and 200t as well, and also xc7z010 (Zynq).
<catphish>
but also ECP5 and ICE40
<catphish>
i do have a zynq
<catphish>
i think i was a little confused because xilinx seems to be the least complete support, but the most prominent on the website
<HackerFoo>
Yeah, those are a separate effort by daveshah and others using a different place and route tool.
<HackerFoo>
My understanding is that ICE40 and ECP5 are much easier to place and route, but I haven't worked with them. They use nextpnr, while we use VPR (https://verilogtorouting.org/) for the Xilinx chips.
<tpb>
Title: Verilog to RoutingVerilog to Routing | Open source tools for FPGA architecture and CAD research (at verilogtorouting.org)
<tpb>
Title: GitHub - daveshah1/nextpnr-xilinx: Experimental flows using nextpnr for Xilinx devices (at github.com)
<HackerFoo>
SymbiFlow is basically any FPGA toolchain we can cobble together from open source software, so it includes both.
<HackerFoo>
In the same way that software toolchains are often a pipeline several tools that might vary based on the source language and target architecture.
<catphish>
makes sense, thanks, i'm not actually attached to xilinx, i would just like to play with the open source toolchain
<catphish>
perhaps a cheap ecp5 board would be my best bet
<noopwafel>
presumably the icestick is the cheapest board there, if you really just want to play
<noopwafel>
but something else (and ideally ecp5-based) is way more practical for anything "real" :)
<catphish>
ecp5 chips seem super cheap and practical but there's a weird lack of dev boards
<noopwafel>
they are kinda in-progress for the most part
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<noopwafel>
e.g., ULX3S is now almost shipping in bulk
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<noopwafel>
there was also a group buy for orangecrab recently, but I guess deadline is past
<yeti>
has some nice examples but I've the wrong board... meh!
<catphish>
ULX3S is still pretty expensive compared with the cost of the 12F, but does look good
<miek>
the orangecrab is up for general sale now too btw, from groupgets/1bitsquared
<catphish>
i assume if it's a success china will churn them out soon enough
<noopwafel>
miek: oh nice
<noopwafel>
I've found the (esp32-less) ulx3s boards to be really convenient
<noopwafel>
but you can also DIY boards very cheaply
<noopwafel>
if you're capable of DIYing
<catphish>
perhaps i'm way off the mark here, but i don't quite understand why someone isn't selling a mass produced ECP5-25F board for < $50
<noopwafel>
people seem to like overcomplicating them :p
<noopwafel>
I have one of kbeckmann's Pergola boards here, which is a really cheap ecp5 design, it is great
<noopwafel>
ecp5-12f with an iMX in front
<Lofty>
My understanding is that the ECP5 has a lot of extra external things needed to work with it
<noopwafel>
very minimal bom
<Lofty>
noopwafel: so basically an ecp5-25f
<noopwafel>
Lofty: shhh :D
<noopwafel>
it's just .. the effort of doing this in bulk is huge
<catphish>
i know flea86 did some ecp5 boards, but don't think he has a single unified mass produced one
<noopwafel>
and a lot of people want to run CPUs, and so they kind of want some RAM, and then some nice high-speed connectivity, and..
<catphish>
yeah, FleaFPGA 'Ohm' Board was a $45 kickstarter, but for some reason stopped after the first production run
<Lofty>
My goal one day is to build a Cyclone 10 GX dev board
<Lofty>
Mainly because the price of the only C10GX board I know of is astronomical
<noopwafel>
hm, the chips are not as expensive as I assumed
<catphish>
i'd love to see a cheap fpga hobby board, but never designed a board that complicated, so i won't be the one to bring it :(
<Lofty>
A C10GX board is never gonna be *cheap*
<Lofty>
But yeah
<catphish>
that flea board proved that a ecp5-25f can be, but presumably there wasn't the ongoing demand
<noopwafel>
you can get BOM for a ecp5 board under $25 in small quantities
<catphish>
last i spoke to flea86 he said <Flea86> Hello. I take it you missed the Orange Crab and ULX3s crowdfunding campaigns? I do not have any FPGA boards currently for sale, but I am working on improved versions of my current hardware.
<catphish>
so that's fun
<noopwafel>
(for as long as jlcpcb's 4-layer pricing lasts)
<catphish>
noopwafel: so i suppose my ongoing question is: if that BOM exists, why can't i buy the boards :(
<miek>
because a $25 bom doesn't mean someone can sell it for anywhere near that and make a living
<catphish>
i always thought a $25 BOM meant someone in china could sell it for $25 and somehow still make money :)
<catphish>
maybe that kind of thing relies on supplies of counterfeit chips or similar, but still, why not $50 :)
<noopwafel>
I think also: icestick is super cheap to just have a random board
<noopwafel>
or the ice40 eval board
<yeti>
upduino?
<yeti>
small iCE40UP5K board... with or without FT232H
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<catphish>
anyway, without getting bogged down with specifics and being pointlessly demanding, i just hope someone releases a nice "generally available" ecp5 hobby board
<catphish>
and yeah, icestick looks cool, thanks :)
<catphish>
HackerFoo: that looks cool, i'm not at all familiar with the EOS S3
<catphish>
HackerFoo: what is that FPGA? is it their own and purely designed to be used with open source tools?
<catphish>
they actually list symbiflow as their supported toolchain
<HackerFoo>
It is QuickLogic's part, and they officially support SymbiFlow.
<catphish>
well that's cool++
<catphish>
integrated accelerometer and pressure sensor too, shame there's no gyro!
<HackerFoo>
It's small, but it has a Cortex-M4F, and as far as I know, QuickLogic is the first company to directly support an open source toolchain.
<HackerFoo>
Yeah, gyros are more expensive though.
<HackerFoo>
You can probably get a compatible gyro board, though.
<catphish>
would be fun to try doing a multirotor in a fpga
<catphish>
battery charger too, this board keeps on giving
<catphish>
might give it a try
<HackerFoo>
You could implement a Kalman filter. I worked on an IMU, and I wrote a complementary filter that worked pretty well on the 32-bit non-FP ARM MCU for 800 MHz samples, but I didn't have time or computational power to implement a Kalman filter.
<catphish>
i don't think you'd ever get a good enough result without a gyro
<catphish>
but i could be wrong, there are much cleverer programmers than me out there
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<catphish>
i realise i'm rambling here, but another thing, how is it that a company is able to produce a SoC with an ARM processor and a proprietary FPGA, and yet rely on someone else to come up with a simple dev board?
<catphish>
oh, i guess in this case quicklogic did make the dev board too, they just choose to supply it in a strange way
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<catphish>
i'll buy one and play anyway
<noopwafel>
HackerFoo: ooh neat!
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<catphish>
HackerFoo: 800MHz sampes is quite a lot of samples :) so i guess there's some definitely possibilities there
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<HackerFoo>
Ah, sorry, that was a typo. 800Hz :)
<HackerFoo>
800MHz motion data would just be ridiculous.