Snickerdoodle board on FLOSS Weekly

I haven't watched the video since most of my computers don't have sound hooked up, so this comment may already be addressed in the video:

Snickerdoodle has a very impressive price for a Zynq board, but what's it doing on FLOSS weekly?  Don't you have to use the proprietary Xilinx Vivado software to program the Zynq FPGA?

The closed toolchain is not ideal, but this is pretty much an universal problem for FPGA design.

I think FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) is still relevant if a FPGA based project like this is releasing HDL "source code".

I've not gotten clarification on yet on whether their board is Open Source Hardware.  I hope that they will release schematics, PCB layout and BOM.  Could you comment, rcousins?

fustini We're going to be posting the schematics & BOM in the next week or two (just have a few final tweaks to make to the power supply subsystem that will further decrease the standby/sleep power consumption).

johnbeetem gdstew Of course, you could always synthesize an FPGA *in* the FPGA and run whichever open-source toolchain you'd like. While it's disappointing the tools aren't open, FPGAs are fundamentally the most open source silicon component you could ever ask for - you are in complete control over what the chip is doing at the gate level.

We can only make open the software that's in our control (with the two primary closed-source items being the FPGA toolchain and the TI radio firmware). There are numerous technical (and, of course, "business") reasons these companies haven't totally opened up these tools, but we don't really believe/have faith in the 'sit and wait' method when it comes to changing paradigms or corporate philosophies.

We just want to provide powerful tools for people to create and learn about new things. It's still possible to be a highly productive carpenter regardless of open/closed the designs of your hammer/saw/drill are. Ultimately, if enough people get this technology into their hands and truly want to affect change, we believe the "people" will find a way.

As an aside, if someone has an open FPGA toolchain that has been proven to work with Zynq, we're more than happy to try it out and see how we can support it.

-Ryan

Drew: I hope that they will release schematics, PCB layout and BOM.

Schematics and BOM definitely, never really understood the need for PCB layout unless there is a layout related problem. If there is, there is not much I can do to fix it

especially in today's 6 or more layer SBC world. Cloning ? I like seeing all the different products with different capabilities. This has not really hurt pricing competition

either as a lot of the competing SBCs' prices hover reasonably around the Raspberry Pi price and I recently bought a 1.6 GHz quad-core 1 GB Orange Pi PC for a little

less than 19 USD including shipping.

Ryan

After over 40 years I've learned to live the fact that certain things in the electronics industry are just going to be proprietary. As long as I can get good tools at reasonable prices,

which has always been the biggest problem I've had with proprietary tool sets, I can live with it. The Vivado Design Suite is free which is a very good price ! I haven't had time

to check out the licensing restrictions yet (won't really need it until March 2016) but i assume this is for non-commercial designs which is what I want to do for now anyway. I

would like to see open tool sets that would remove such restrictions available, I just don't think it is going to happen for certain products which include FPGAs and GPUs.

P.S. 99% FUNDED !!!!!!  20:41 CDT. I think we're going to make it

Drew: I hope that they will release schematics, PCB layout and BOM.

Schematics and BOM definitely, never really understood the need for PCB layout unless there is a layout related problem. If there is, there is not much I can do to fix it

especially in today's 6 or more layer SBC world. Cloning ? I like seeing all the different products with different capabilities. This has not really hurt pricing competition

either as a lot of the competing SBCs' prices hover reasonably around the Raspberry Pi price and I recently bought a 1.6 GHz quad-core 1 GB Orange Pi PC for a little

less than 19 USD including shipping.

Ryan

After over 40 years I've learned to live the fact that certain things in the electronics industry are just going to be proprietary. As long as I can get good tools at reasonable prices,

which has always been the biggest problem I've had with proprietary tool sets, I can live with it. The Vivado Design Suite is free which is a very good price ! I haven't had time

to check out the licensing restrictions yet (won't really need it until March 2016) but i assume this is for non-commercial designs which is what I want to do for now anyway. I

would like to see open tool sets that would remove such restrictions available, I just don't think it is going to happen for certain products which include FPGAs and GPUs.

P.S. 99% FUNDED !!!!!!  20:41 CDT. I think we're going to make it