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First Impression (10) - Lattice Semiconductor's iCE40HX8K Breakout Board - A Minimalist View

Lattice Semiconductor must be strong believers in the phrase "less is more", as by providing this minimalist iCE40HX8K Breakout Board they expect one to work one's butt off to get the most out of it. However, they could only be described as true democrats, because not only is the board minimalist so is its sparse user guide, as well the challenging documentation on using the development software, iCEcube 2.

This means that if you love the excellent iCE40 family of FPGAs, like we do, you need to be prepared to bring your "A" game to the digital design fiesta, like we had to, when figuring out how to use this particular FPGA development board.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler - Albert Einstein.

Practically Using Git (1) - On the Synology NAS DS215j DiskStation

I've recently started work porting the design of the DE0 Nano serial communications protocol to Lattice Semiconductor's iCE40 HX8K Breakout Board (A First Impression review of the breakout board is coming soon). Now since I wasn't sure how much change would be involved, in porting the design, I thought now would be a good time to start using Git (git-scm.com) for versioning control religiously. Hence, I installed a Git server on a Synology DiskStation DS215j Network Attached Storage (NAS) (First impression review also coming soon) and got on with it. Here's how the exercise unfolded.

In the News #5 - The Arduino TRE

Hot on the heels of the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B+ with its quad core processor, Arduino are set to release the Arduino TRE consisting of an AVR arduino and a 1-GHz Sitara AM335x processor, which allows makers to get up to 100 times more performance than the Arduino Leonardo or Uno. The TRE is set to host a Linux operating system that will allow users to run processing-intensive algorithm and high-speed communications, alongside the Arduino's traditional applications. Sounds similar to Intel's Galileo doesn't it? Also, this will be the first Arduino manufactured in the U.S and not in Italy or China.

Parallella: The Personal Supercomputer - A Review

Details: Created on Sunday, 08 June 2014 14:32; Last Updated on Saturday, 17 January 2015 09:41

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Introduction

Today should have been a day of great delight as my personal supercomputer, or Parallella the Epiphany III processor with Xilinx Zynq 7020 FPGA, finally appeared in my hands after many months of delay. However, I wasn't exactly jumping up and down with joy for, as like most "supercomputing for everyone" enthusiasts, I was suffering from "where is my Parallella" fatigue.

Parallella first appeared as a Kickstarter project, in October 2012, where it did wonderfully well in raising $898,921 in its allocated fund raising slot. However, at the time I didn't back the project, as the $3 million stretch goal required for the production run of the 64-core version, the Epiphany IV processor, was not met.

You can read about my observations using the Parallela kit in the Blog Category: OpenCL, Altera SDK and the Parallella Post. Also, you can read about my projects using the Parallella kit in the Project Series - The Parallella Chronicles (link coming soon).

Tutorial 1: Part 6 - A Transmission Arbitration Module

Details: Created on Saturday, 14 June 2014 12:53; Last Updated on Sunday, 13 July 2014 06:51

0000630 To alleviate the poverty of flexibility in our existing design, described in previous parts of the tutorial, a revision to the design has had to be considered. This has resulted in the development of a transmission arbitration module. Thus, the overall objectives of part six, of tutorial series 1, is to firstly design and implement a round-robin transmission slot arbitration module that can be used in conjunction with the UART module developed previously. Then, secondly, a real-world example should be demonstrated on the DE0-Nano Development Kit platform.