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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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  • Like there are other obstacles than price for FPGA.

    Evaluation Board, Spartan-7 50 FPGA, 256MB RAM, 4 x Pmod Headers, Vivado

    Price:£103 (Price is before tax)

     

    Like there are other obstacles than price for FPGA.

    Think about it for a second, OK?

    You can build a PC for that kind of money.

    You can buy 50+ arduinos for that kind of money.

    You can buy month worth of food for that kind of money.

    You can buy 4 raspberry PI's for that kind of money + get some spare change for some small fun parts.

    I think even watching a movies worth of that money is better investment than buying this board.

    How delusional are this manufacturers, i bet no one in their right mind buys this garbage in a first place other than on impulse, no wonder they give this crap away for free.

  • in reply to recurzive

    There are things a single FPGA can do that are not possible with 5000 Arduino's, or Pi's. Specifically, throughput related or timing (accuracy) related. When you sent that message through the Internet, it probably went through infrastructure containing dozens (a hundred maybe) FPGA's across the world. The infrastructure manufacturers used FPGA's to produce the best product for a given cost. That's just one example of FPGA use. Those who can use FPGA's will earn that months' worth of food within an hour. The major obstacle is not the cost of the development board, it is the very different skill-set than for an Arduino or Raspberry Pi software programmer. Learning that skill-set ideally requires courses, or books that cost more than the development board. Some resources are free online however, and such a development board can be used to get those skills. But digital knowledge is also required (in contrast for software development on Arduino/Pi), so it is worth studying that too (there are some online resources for that too).

  • in reply to shabaz

     

    Could you point us to some of those resources (especially the free ones or less expensive ones), I know I don't have much time at the moment but FPGAs are something I'm keen to learn.

     

    Kas

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    Good call ,  I have really enjoyed Clive's writings (although I don't believe that I have read this one).

    Gene

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