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What's Stopping You Building Your Next Project with an FPGA? (Please, Don't Blame the Cost!)

rscasny

The community does a ton of projects with MCUs. If they do the job for you, that's great. But the element14 community is about learning, experimenting and roadtesting. In this spirit, I am proposing that you should try building your next project with an FPGA (SoC), if it suits the application, of course. What's stopping you? Oh, some members have voiced the cost issue. Granted, some FPGAs do cost a lot. But chip manufacturers are rolling out economical chipsets that most makers, pro-makers or experienced hobbyists can afford. (If you can't, then apply to a RoadTest and if you win you can get a dev board for FREE.) I think FPGA / SoCs will move into a more important place for electronic designers, especially for IoT applications. Perhaps it's time to experiement with one. What's stopping you?

 

Here's a link to a current roadtest:Digilent ARTY S7 Dev Board (Xilinx Spartan 7)   Apply today!

 

Randall Scasny

RoadTest Program Manager

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  • I think the answer to recurzive's rather cynical "the price of everything and the value of nothing" comment is that creative people need to create, and if you want to create digital logic even £103 for an FPGA board is quite cheap compared to what we used to have to do.  It would be like saying "why are you paying $3000 for a used oboe and $40 per week on lessons when you can pick up a bunch of used CDs with oboists who are better than you'll ever be."  Well, creating something -- music, writing, woodworking, software, digital designs, etc. etc. -- is totally different from consuming it.  Sure, you can write software for what a lot of hobbyists do with FPGA boards, but that's not the point.  Digital design is a wonderful creative ability and watching your creation working is much more thrilling than watching a simulation of it on a computer.  It's "The Feeling of Power", as Isaac Asimov put it.  JMO/YMMV

     

    ["The price of everything" is from Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.]

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  • I think the answer to recurzive's rather cynical "the price of everything and the value of nothing" comment is that creative people need to create, and if you want to create digital logic even £103 for an FPGA board is quite cheap compared to what we used to have to do.  It would be like saying "why are you paying $3000 for a used oboe and $40 per week on lessons when you can pick up a bunch of used CDs with oboists who are better than you'll ever be."  Well, creating something -- music, writing, woodworking, software, digital designs, etc. etc. -- is totally different from consuming it.  Sure, you can write software for what a lot of hobbyists do with FPGA boards, but that's not the point.  Digital design is a wonderful creative ability and watching your creation working is much more thrilling than watching a simulation of it on a computer.  It's "The Feeling of Power", as Isaac Asimov put it.  JMO/YMMV

     

    ["The price of everything" is from Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.]

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