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Is it worth it to kickstart an open-source FPGA IC project?

manili

Hello all,

 

We know that FPGA itself is a kind of ASIC, i.e. some companies build ICs which have the capability to be reprogramed. We have open-source CPUs, GPUs, Bus Controllers and so many different types of IP cores in the community. Why there is not any sort of open-source FPGA ICs out there, is it because of it's complexity to design or is it even not worth it?

I just saw a project here which was about creating our own EDAs for FPGAs but the project suffered from lack of informations about the FPGA internals so the creator (@johnbeetem) did some reversed engineering, as far as I understood. I asked this question in a Quora comment and Kyle's answer helped me a lot but I need more info, please.

 

Cheers,

Mohammad

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  • Hello guys,

     

    Today I just saw a mind-blowing product from "Achronix" called eFPGA. AFAIU this is simply the IP core of an FPGA which could be buy by a company to integrate to its products (ASIC or SoC). I think this could be an application of an open-source FPGA. however I admit that designing/verifying such IP core is very expensive, but it could be very useful for startups and little companies. Do you agree?

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  • Hello guys,

     

    Today I just saw a mind-blowing product from "Achronix" called eFPGA. AFAIU this is simply the IP core of an FPGA which could be buy by a company to integrate to its products (ASIC or SoC). I think this could be an application of an open-source FPGA. however I admit that designing/verifying such IP core is very expensive, but it could be very useful for startups and little companies. Do you agree?

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  • in reply to manili

    The Achronix parts are HUGE - and aim to compete at the high end - they have been in business for 10 years and have just about started to make a profit (do some web hunting if you want see how much it has cost investors to get there).. The Achronix IP offering is for companies with deep pockets - 16nm Finfet process - probably $50M minimum to make a chip. This stuff is way outside the range of open source and little companies.

     

    There are plenty of parts out there - what is it you want from an FPGA that you can't buy now ?

     

    MK

  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Of course I'm not going to kickstart such project myself. Surly I do not have such ability even in theories!!! I'm just wondering to know if such project has its own benefits?

    As I watched the company's ads, it looks like Achronix is going to target startups for its new product, because the company claims that the product is 10x cheaper than real FPGA packages. However I did not find anything about the product's price yet.

     

    BTW thanks a lot for the reply.

  • in reply to manili

    I hadn't come across Achronix recently, I've been away from the FPGA world for too long clearly.... but.... Wow, those Speedster22i FPGA's are seriously impressive looking parts! So to me it looks like the eFPGA is essentially the basic Speedster22i FPGA fabric as an IP core which you can then incorporate into your own custom ASIC with your own mix of hard IP cores. So, yes it'll bring down the cost of developing an FPGA from scratch, but I think is right, it's going to be extremely costly still so not in range of the Open Source community (without backing of a large corporation willing to fund OSHW development) or small startups (without the backing of venture capitalists with deep pockets).

     

    I need to do some more research on who Achronix are and what they offer though, they look very interesting. Thanks for bringing these parts to my attention! image

     

    Best Regards,

     

    Rachael

  • in reply to rachaelp

    Well, I heard Intel is going to bring on-chip FPGAs (Altra) to its Xeon processors for high-end usages (e.g. datacenters). But I agree that this one is much more customizable at lower price (however we should not forget the cost of fabrication for customers).

    I think it's not a bad idea to take a look at Achronix's documentation about eFPGA.