GateMate - An European FPGA - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 06:48:42 am
content: They say "The Only European FPGA":https://www.colognechip.com/https://colognechip.com/docs/CologneChip-GateMate-Productbrief-latest.pdfPresenting the GateMate FPGA Evaluation Board from Cologne ChipJohannes 4GNU_Linu

author: Mahagam
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 08:58:10 am
content: Where can I find documentation? Where is software?

author: RoGeorge
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 09:43:58 am
content: No idea, somewhere inside their website:https://www.colognechip.com/Synthesis suite software:https://github.com/YosysHQ/yosysDocs and datasheets (there are tabs in the middle of the webpage, click on the 'Documentation' tab):https://www.colognechip.com/programmable-logic/gatemate/

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 09:57:20 am
content: QuoteI wonder what will be the improvement over 4inputs or 6inputs LUTs..

author: Beta_vulgaris
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 10:00:02 am
content: Atmel AT40KEL040/ATF280 are also designed in Europe.

author: cfbsoftware
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 10:41:06 pm
content: Olimex (another European company) are now producing a board which uses a GateMate:https://www.olimex.com/Products/FPGA/GateMate/GateMateA1-EVB/open-source-hardware

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 10:46:32 pm
content: Quote from: cfbsoftware on March 02, 2024, 10:41:06 pmAh, that's cool if we want to evaluate it. From the vendor's website, apparently you need to contact sales just to buy an eval board, and I'm suspecting the price may be quite a bit higher. Unless I've missed some pages.The FPGA seems to only be available as one package for now.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 10:52:42 pm
content: Note that this isn't quite the only european company designing FPGAs, although this one is certainly more niche, with radiation-hardened parts:https://nanoxplore.com/

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2024, 11:24:06 pm
content: On a positive side, this is not vaporware, since at least some devices are available. They also seem to be using open source tooling.But the only available package is not great. Would be nice to see something in TQFP.

author: Someone
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2024, 12:47:27 am
content: Quote from: iMo on March 02, 2024, 09:57:20 amReverse, it is a huge step backwards from n-lut.

author: iMo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2024, 10:22:44 am
content: Quote from: Someone on March 03, 2024, 12:47:27 amI think the fpga design comes from the people around the yosys/nextprn (as they reverse engineered the ice40 afaik), the arch close to the Lattice's ice40, with the LUTs somehow modified - not sure what was the reason to mess with the LUTs that way - perhaps some IP/patents?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2024, 12:47:24 pm
content: Either way, it is quite interesting to see that the Yosis opensource FPGA design tools opens the door for chip designers to come up with their own FPGAs.

author: cfbsoftware
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2024, 01:41:10 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 02, 2024, 10:46:32 pmYou can buy the Olimex GateMateA1-EVB board directly from Olimex at the URL above for EU 50.You can buy the Cologne Chip CCGM1A1-E1 evaluation board from DigiKey. The price is quite a bit higher at $US 260:https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail/cologne-chip/CCGM1A1-E1/16087880FYI GitHub user fm4dd has published the designs for a couple of daughterboards and a RISCV tutorial for the CCGM1A1:https://github.com/fm4dd

author: up8051
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2024, 09:59:22 am
content: GateMate don't support 3.3V I/OQuote

author: woofy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 04, 2024, 10:28:09 am
content: Quote from: cfbsoftware on March 04, 2024, 01:41:10 amDigikey does the Olimex board too, just no stock at the moment.https://www.digikey.co.uk/en/products/detail/olimex-ltd/GATEMATEA1-EVB/22258042?s=N4IgTCBcDaIOYEMAuBTAtslIC6BfIA

author: spth
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 15, 2024, 08:24:02 pm
content: Quote from: iMo on March 02, 2024, 09:57:20 amLooking a the the documentation, the LUT tree is built in a way that it can be used as either two 4-input LUTs or one 8-input LUT (see Figure 4.4 in the "GateMate Primitives Library (November 2023)" pdf).

author: glenenglish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 05, 2024, 10:44:33 am
content: I spent a couple of hours reading through all the documentation.Impressive, useful range of features.and cheap. Something from Europe that is cheap, I don't beleive it !$16 USD on Digikey for Digikety pricing is cheap.Looks like they have only need for a single mask set for all devices.Time will tell how the tools go. Efinix tools are slowly maturing ... but they've got nothing on mature toolchains and frameworks that the big two have.Actually the documentation was very readible.I couldnt figure out of the logic cell can also be a small ram. (like what you use to glue stages together, like 35 bits wide, 8 words deep) . That's a major pain with Efinix, cant be a ram, it chews routing and Fmax suffers (but the fabric is super fast) .I'm gonna have to try a board.

author: cfbsoftware
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2024, 12:13:40 am
content: FYI A guy named Anton Kuzmin also has designed several GateMate-related boards:https://github.com/GMM-7550/gmm7550-hardwareHe advised me that he is planning to arrange a community-funded production run in the coming weeks.Here is a link to a presentation he gave at FOSDEM 2024:https://fosdem.org/2024/schedule/track/libre-soc-fpga-and-vlsi/

author: glenenglish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2024, 01:13:43 am
content: I'm really interested in the company and how this came about, maybe it has something to do with some of the big projects (fusion reactors, accelerators etc ) in Europe.I had a good few emails with their chief of R&D last night. as I suspected, it's a single mask set , and multiple dies are on the wafer all connected- and for small devices they just cleave them apart.very coolstatic power is on par with Spartan 7 for the size.interesting. very different logic cell eh ?

author: laugensalm
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2024, 09:20:20 am
content: I've done some mapping experiments on their technology using direct synthesis, i.e. not going through their tools which at that time was a Xilinx primitive emulation.The agreements made won't let me publish the results, but bottomline: The CPE primitives perform very well with cascaded signal processing networks, my dry dock experiments with post-mapping co-simulation hinted that this would perform way better than the classical DSP48 architectures in terms of routing while just using the bits that are needed (in 'stupid' AI acceleration applications, a 4x4 bit truncated multiplier can be just sufficient).However, this stopped at place & route, the tools just weren't ready at the time and the LUT trees were organized non-optimally, apart from several issues with yosys and their memory inference. So, eventually I was running out of time, gave up, and had to revert to classic LUT-Architectures.When it comes to power, I would *suspect* that the CPE architecture leaves more room for power optimization when not going through some emulation, but again, never got past the mapping stage. I might want to revisit some issues for academical fun, since the yosys CXXRTL back end turned out to handle quite some complexities.About the company I know so far that they had been doing ISDN chipsets for a long time. They have obviously gotten some of the (sparsely available) technology funding to get going with their FPGA architecture and avoided all other hypes, apart from an announcement from Tachyum about a cooperation (no comment...).

author: glenenglish
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2024, 09:57:05 am
content: thanks for the write up / info, interesting.appreciated.regards,