MORE ABOUT FPGA

Starting this week, the new Arduino MKR VIDOR 4000 board is available in the Elektor Store. With an Intel 10CL016 FPGA. That’s 16 000 logic elements plus some specialised signal processing embedded multipliers (read: audio and video). The board, at 83 x 25 mm (3.3 x 1 inches) is as full as an egg. In addition to standard GPIOs, there are HDMI, USB, JST and MIPI (Camera) connectors. And let’s not forget the ARM ATSAMD21 32-bit microcontroller!

What’s the fuss? ...Like we didn't have Arm technology in FPGAs for decades with the Cortex-A CPU based SoCs? Of course, but that’s the CPU integrated alongside FPGA fabric, rather than within the FPGA fabric. Arm-based FPGA SoCs have shipped in millions, and an example is the Xilinx Zync SoC family. The new development is that Arm DesignStart FPGA brings Cortex-M CPUs to the configurable FPGA fabric so that Arm CPUs are now available across all Xilinx FPGAs.

FPGA development remains a complicated job, but open source and open hardware tools like TinyFPGA manage to make it more accessible. Although still a long way from Arduino-style microcontroller development, they definitely bring FPGAs closer to the people. Let's have a look at the TinyFPGA BX board.

Who said that size doesn’t matter? It does. Many sexy applications prefer small boards, especially the long-endurance ones. The Arrow giveaway dev boards in this week’s selection are like that. Some of them sport an FPGA, others have ARM-core processors; they all let you express yourself the way you want on a small surface while consuming little power.

Gone are the days of tech companies focusing solely on their core product offerings. Today, chip makers are working on artificial intelligence projects, IP vendors are investing in IoT security research, and social media giants are looking into silicon design (and even FPGAs). We believe these are positive signs pointing to a healthy, evolving industry. Let’s review some of the most compelling electronics industry news stories from the past week.

In this video, developer Riemer Grootjans explains several powerful features of the SmartScope. Starting with the mobile use with a tablet, he then demonstrates I2C decoding using a multiple temperature sensor board connected to a laptop PC, hooked up to the Smartscope as a logic analyzer. Further SPI decoding is briefly showed too, as well as recorded data export and arbitrary wave generator (AWG).

Researchers working at Linköping University in Sweden have developed an optimization process to give a five-fold boost in processing speed of a standard algorithm implemented in an FPGA...

Presented here is an FPGA-based digital signal processing board featuring everything necessary to do baseband processing of traditional narrowband modes like SSB/CW and AM. It solves many of the issues and limitations seen in simpler SDR platforms. Capable of transmitting as well as receiving, it provides a perfect foundation for a shortwave and/or VHF/UHF/SHF/microwave transceiver, ideal for scienti c, ham, and other serious radio applications.

It’s that time again – Elektor's July & August 2017 edition is now available for purchase! This issue is packed full of things to keep you entertained. You can get your printed copy posted direct to your door for free, with no shipping costs at all.

FPGA application design has never been easy and the fact that devices keep growing bigger and more powerful doesn’t help to improve the situation. More powerful devices result in more demanding applications which in return lead to even more powerful devices, an infernal loop (VICIEUZE CIRKEL). The engineers developing these increasingly complex applications do not have the time to study in detail the hardware that makes it all possible, and so, to help them out, hardware manufacturers provide high-level tools, libraries, stacks, IP blocks, and the like.