• Author Author: rsc
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Path to Programmable - Discussion points

rsc

After spending many hour this week working with the MiniZed, I have in mind a few discussion points to ponder......

1) Why aren't there any MiniZed community projects on the Zedboard.org site?

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Is this board not popular, or obsolete already? I look at all the available example projects for Arduino and Raspberry Pi and wonder.

2) Is the Zynq platform just too complicated/time consuming for most hobbyists?

The amount of HD space required for the toolchain is enormous, and a fast machine is required to be efficient at all.  The upgrade from 2018.2 to 2018.3 took hours.

3) The software and hardware training modules didn't touch at all on the Petalinux OS, why not? 

I'm guessing that most people on this site are familiar with Linux and Raspberry Pi programming and would like to know how the Petalinux OS operates, and how to work with the PL from it.

4) The training modules were based on old Vivado and SDK versions, while that wasn't a big problem, it was curious why somethings weren't upgraded.

Everyone wants to run the newest software packages, why set up training on old stuff?

5) I ask myself, "Would I swap out an Arduino or RPi in one of my projects for a MiniZed?"

My current answer is "maybe, but not yet"....

 

I'd be interested in hearing from an Avnet or Xilinx representative on the future plans for these boards.  Are they strictly development only boards and we shouldn't try and design-in one

in a new project because they will be discarded for the next "improved" version?  Or...will they try and build a "community" of users and promote/capture projects and code.

 

Just some things to ponder about....

Scott

  • Scott,

     

    These are some very interesting points.  The MiniZed board is a very large and very complex device that is targeted to use cases that are way outside of range of normal user projects.  There are problems (massively parallel logic, super high speed controls, etc.) were the MiniZed board (or some other high edge board) might be your only viable platform, but for any less, the cost and complexity of this type of product is hard to justify.  I have needed to incorporate CPLDs and FPGAs into designs to handle some tasks that were not easily done on a microprocessor, but I have found it easier to do where the CPLD/FPGA acts more as a co-processor as opposed to combining all of the computing functions into the FPGA.

     

    Just saying...

    Gene

  • Thanks for providing your perspective after using the MiniZed.

     

    This is precisely the type of information I wanted to know before I made any type of decision about these types of boards.

     

    I did not sign up for this training because I suspected that my ADD issues would be too great an obstacle. From many of the reviews, I clearly made the right decision.

     

    DAB