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Affordable Versal parts and their penetration in hobbyist circles

unixux

Good day all,

It's been a while since relatively affordable Versal boards came around - at least two sub-$1000 parts from reputable suppliers are available, as well as very interesting board that combines AMD Ryzen with Versal Edge device (that's a tad more expensive though- but still a far cry from the full sticker for the big devkit boards). All are based on the same xcve2302 part - SOM actually. And considering the amount of innovation that Versal ACAP brings to the table - and the AI revolution we're living through, one could naively expect an explosion in both content and support. But it's been relatively lackluster thus far. To an untrained eye there is very little cross-pollination from non-ACAP projects into Versal and those who do target it tend to just support the big expensive parts. (Not to take away from whatever content that _does exist - it's very informative and interesting to those who seek)

What's missing in this scenario - is it vendor support, or hobbyist interest, or is the added value from new technology still not perceived sufficient to justify the cost ?

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  • I suspect that the lack of hobbyist interest is for the same reasons that I am completely un-interested in the Versal series of parts from a one person design company point of view.

    They are simply too complex - no useful project using Versal parts is likely to require less than several person-years of engineering effort, lets say approximately 10000 hours minimum. But these chips are aimed at things like fully autonomous vehicles - projects which have so far guzzled up billions of £$ with precious little to show for it (in terms of product or profit).

    10000 hours isn't quite out of the range of a hobby project (build a decent telescope might take the same kind of effort) but there won't be many takers.

    Open source projects can generate that level of effort but leading edge FPGA and Open Source don't sit easily together.

    So I'm interested in sub $20 FPGAs that I can use in non BGA packages, but a 208pin TQFP Versal for £20 wouldn't interest me because it would take me forever to get it do anything.

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    These issues are very real - and when we're talking about smaller commercial projects, justifying Versal complexity is easily prohibitive. But EE hobbyists aren't the type of people to be deterred by sheer complexity. And any modern SOC platform is immensely complex - Zynq+ book runs 644 pages and UGs have no bottom. But at least there is a plethora of documentation and reference designs a/k/a other people's code that can come to ones rescue - and that's what I find most lacking with Versal.

    After all. abstracting away complexity is natural to any tech progress. One doesn't need to fully understand Zynq and ARM to put together a nice relatively fancy SDR from affordable, documented parts like Zedboard with fmcomms2 (i got one running in 30 minutes, and i'm barely qualified to place a flipflop). I could never do that with a Versal part though. But people behind Versal and those boards certainly could make it doable - if they saw a future in progress. Alas zynq seems to be to AMD what iPhone is to Apple - if there was only original iPhone and a nuclear powered iPhone 20 with a soldered on Ferrari, a manual in Shumerian and no screen. 

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  • in reply to michaelkellett

    These issues are very real - and when we're talking about smaller commercial projects, justifying Versal complexity is easily prohibitive. But EE hobbyists aren't the type of people to be deterred by sheer complexity. And any modern SOC platform is immensely complex - Zynq+ book runs 644 pages and UGs have no bottom. But at least there is a plethora of documentation and reference designs a/k/a other people's code that can come to ones rescue - and that's what I find most lacking with Versal.

    After all. abstracting away complexity is natural to any tech progress. One doesn't need to fully understand Zynq and ARM to put together a nice relatively fancy SDR from affordable, documented parts like Zedboard with fmcomms2 (i got one running in 30 minutes, and i'm barely qualified to place a flipflop). I could never do that with a Versal part though. But people behind Versal and those boards certainly could make it doable - if they saw a future in progress. Alas zynq seems to be to AMD what iPhone is to Apple - if there was only original iPhone and a nuclear powered iPhone 20 with a soldered on Ferrari, a manual in Shumerian and no screen. 

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