Xilinx sends lawyers after online educators. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Gobi
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 04:58:14 pm
content: This is just unacceptable. I understand attacking people for slander or copyright infringement, but attacking online free and paid educators just seems extremely petty.Video is from motherboard designer and youtube educator Robert Feranec.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 05:12:46 pm
content: is it simple a case of a too heavy handed protection of their trademark?, something they have to do if they want to keep it

author: Gobi
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 05:35:47 pm
content: That argument would make sense if the creators infringed on their copyright, or in any way defamed or slandered xilinx. They were purely educational. I know that you have to protect your trademark to keep it. But wouldn't it be more beneficial to send lawyers after people actually abusing their trademark over electronics community educators? Call me old fashioned but that just seems spiteful in my eyes.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 06:06:53 pm
content: This is just an unfortunate aspect of trademark law. This is why the copyright pages in technical books state that certain terms and logos appearing in the book are property of their respective owners. That seems to be the accepted solution. A little text overlay on the opening screen is all that is needed to cure the violation.This sort of chore gets handed to very junior lawyers or even a secretary to write. A well written "cease and desist" would state the requirements for continuing to use the name and logo.The trademark owner *must* send out cease and desist letters or they will lose the trademark. The appropriate response is a polite letter addressed to the corporate general counsel asking how they wish to have their rights acknowledged. There is nothing difficult or malicious about this. Everyone has to follow the rules that have been established by legal precedent.I find it surprising that most people *don't* know this as it is a very common problem.I worked for a major oil company which had *extremely* strict rules about the use of the company logo. You *had* to use the company supplied logo because if you made one up yourself and it was not an *exact* match for the proportions of the official logo, they would lose the rights to the logo. The logo was very simple, so a coworker had just whipped up a small PostScript file. Senior management had a cow. Not sure how they figured out it was not an official rendition, but they did.

author: vodka
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 07:30:37 pm
content: The solution is very easy, when the multinationals turns Sovietics, we have to touch the pocket. And the solution purposed by the journalist Cesar Vidal is the better for getting down them of the donkey.Editorial Cesar Vidal 21-09-2017 Not Buy Catalan Products.(First part)It was the year 1897 when died Charles Cunningham Boycott that for some time, Boycott had been an administrator from an absentee landlord in the May County from Ireland.In middle of a serious economic crisis,Boycott refused to listen to the requests of the sharecroppers, who requesting a temporary reduction of the income that had to pay.The response of the sharecroppers were to stop working for him and even interrupting any comunication. In fact, the shops interrupted the sale of food and even the postmanstopped to deliver the mails. Boycott brought several dozens of workers of the other side of the country, besides of guard for protecting them. But the result was the costof the harvest grew up until exceeding 10,000 pounds. A value too high for its real value. In december of 1880 , Boycott hadn't other solution that gave up his work .The form in which the decision of those people had affected their economy, finally, he had brought to capitulate ,furthermore his surname passed an other languages, adapted as boycott.Like or not like ,there are people who only react human form when they are affected their pocket.https://youtu.be/hKoIhl8kmxE

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 07:44:07 pm
content: That is surely not right and even type of shooting themselves in the foot. But if it is purely of the use of the logo why not just blank it out in videos and refer to the chip as F-FPGA (f..king FPGA) so everyone knows what the manufacturer name is.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 07:50:43 pm
content: Seriusly?!How retarded does the management at Xilinix have to be to see someone making videos on how to use there chips as a threat to there profitability.They should be paying people to make more videos rather than suing them to stop. If 80% of all FPGA tutorial videos out there used Xilinix chips what do you think most people would chose when they have no specific reason for going for a certain vendor. That's how you take profits from that evil evil Intel company you hate so much, not by making training videos for your chip be in the form courses you have to pay a few grand to even attend.

author: boB
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 08:00:59 pm
content: Great ! I guess I will just have to design out any Xilinx (TM) parts now for future products.Geeesh !The problem with lawyers is that we have too many damn lawyers !

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 08:22:06 pm
content: It sounds like a typical case of fair use. Copyright doesn't mean you can't display a logo. Unfortunately it's also a case of being in a world of hurt because someone with deep pockets has decided he feels like whooping some legal ass, regardless of whether they're right or not. That's not even that important.

author: In Vacuo Veritas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 08:36:29 pm
content: Quote from: boB on January 07, 2019, 08:00:59 pmSure, because there's just so many vendors to choose from.You just haven't seen the jackass behavior from the other guys... yet.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 09:10:47 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 07, 2019, 08:22:06 pmwithout seeing what they complained about it is impossible to tell it is fair use, and I doubt Xilinx cares about a youtuber showing a xilinx logo, they just have a law firm tasked with protecting the use of their trademarks because if they don't claim their right to their trademarks they lose them

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 09:54:45 pm
content: rofl many EE regard FPGA as a kind of solution thats not viable and too complicated, this just helps that thought.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 10:22:16 pm
content: Quote from: langwadt on January 07, 2019, 09:10:47 pmWe have a decent idea, as the situation was described.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 10:56:28 pm
content: Quote from: Mr. Scram on January 07, 2019, 10:22:16 pmfrom the Xilinx Terms of Use "The trademarks, logos and service marks displayed on the Site are the property of Xilinx or other third parties. You are not permitted to use trademarks, logos and service marks found on the Site without the prior written consent of the trademark owner."that said, Xilinx should probably tell their law firm to have a bit more common sense and handle such things in a more reasonable manner

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 12:56:30 am
content: Actually, Xilinx should simply have a senior lawyer draft a form letter rather than leave it to someone who just finished law school.The legal requirements are well established and easy to comply with. This is *not* a big deal. It's just dotting some i's and crossing some t's.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 01:02:46 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on January 07, 2019, 10:56:28 pmAs I understood Xilinx was not happy their dev board was shown together with Altera dev board. And as I understand it's was not something displayed on their website.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 01:30:04 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on January 07, 2019, 10:56:28 pmXilinx can write what it wants, but it doesn't write laws. Not to mention company terms tend to be filled with scary threats to deter people from behaviour companies can factually do nothing about. This isn't how copyright law works.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 03:09:40 am
content: Duh.A legally clueless person posts a bunch of videos. So in due time he gets a formal notice that what he is doing is not allowed. Xilinx didn't write the law. They just have to follow it like everyone else.Xilinx did not have any option other than to send a cease and desist letter.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 03:24:12 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 08, 2019, 03:09:40 amLOL what?

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 03:27:07 am
content: According torhbDave must remove all company logos on oscilloscopes, multimeters and other equipment he tests and compares.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 03:31:58 am
content: It seems lawyers hired by Xylinx wrote a ton of bullshit not having any legal standing in the law.https://youtu.be/64WGwD6VIhIhttps://nofilmschool.com/2013/08/answers-to-legal-questions-films-entertainment-lawQuote

author: Gr8fulFox
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 04:06:14 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 08, 2019, 03:09:40 amYou don't seem to understand trademark law. It would've been illegal for him to manufacture his own parts, and then slap the Xilinx logo on them, to fool customers that they were actually built by Xilinx;that'sthe point of trademark law; so when customers by a chip that says 'Xilinx', they know it was actually built by Xilinx.What this person is doing, is building personal projects with parts made from Xilinx; in that case, it's perfectly legal to include the name and logo of Xilinx in his videos, as long as he doesn't make it seem that the project, itself, was designed, built, or endorsed by Xilinx. This lawsuit is bullshit.

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 04:34:38 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on January 07, 2019, 10:56:28 pmBy reading this you will be agree'ing not to use Xilinx parts in the future. Please show that the same due respect.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 06:38:15 am
content: The proper reaction from a semiconductor company (or any other kind of company) to a guy making a tutorial on how to use their products is to shower them with love, free devkits and all other kinds of support. Unless the lawyers that actually fired of this kind of bullshit don't get reprimanded I'm gonna lose a lot of respect for Xilinx.Is there any kind of precedent for some company losing their trademarks over someone reviewing their products?

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 06:45:48 am
content: Showing a logo in a video that involves there product falls under being fair use.If he was using the logo to make people think a product is from Xilinx when it is actually not that is trademark infringement.If you could not show a logo in a video then youtubers would have put tape or sharpie over all the logos on products visible in the video, From the apple logo on the back of an iPhone or MacBook to the Lacoste or Nike or whatever logo on there shirt.The reason that logos tend to be so well hidden in movies is not because of trademark infringement. By placing a known product in a movie they are essentially advertising the product. This could land the movie studio blame of product placement, or the company who owns the brand could sue them for making an advertisement that makes there product look bad. Also companies pay big money to have movies do a product placement of there product so the movie studio doesn't want to give them product placement for free. So in the end its less trouble to simply avoid showing logos.So if you make a video that includes showing a Xilinx dev board and has you talking about how crap there chips are and that video becomes popular. Well yes Xilinx could certainly sue you for advertising there products being bad and demand a ridiculous sum of money in compensation for the lost sales you supposedly caused them trough some imaginary metric. But they can't use trademark or copyright laws against you for that.

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 07:47:06 am
content: Quote from: boB on January 07, 2019, 08:00:59 pmWell the alternative is intel (lattice and microseemi are not even competing with the big two), a company with proven track record of anticompetitive and anti-consumer behaviour that does anything in it’s power (including illegal stuff) to run competition into the ground as soon as it remotely close to threatening its monopolistic dominanceAre you sure this is a better option?And beside the only way to design out Xilinx parts is to change employer and go to someone working with intel parts since the impact of the preferences of design engineers on which FPGA vendors to use is as close to 0 as you can get, as the decision is typically company wide and a switch from one vendor to the next is quite costly

author: boB
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 07:51:21 am
content: I don't use FPGAs except for very small and inexpensive Silego (Dialog now) 30 cent parts.the Xilinx part that is used now is just a CPLD.Would love to use more FPGAs but they are just too expensive still except for these really small Silegos.I tried Lattice briefly but the licensing and security issues just to be able to program their parts got in my way.Micros do most the work except for some glue logic in my case.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 09:30:51 am
content: Quote from: boB on January 08, 2019, 07:51:21 amActually, if you can make do with the ice40 series from Lattice, the open source IceStorm toolchain works quite well for them.That is not a solution for everyone, obviously, but it is an option. I was playing with it yesterday and it is surprisingly easy to use (and I had it compiled and installed from scratch faster than the 11+GB behemoth of ISE Webpack that I have been using for the Spartan 3 & 6 series before would even download).

author: kiaas
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 09:34:22 am
content: not quite as cheap as the silego ones, but faster and bigger with an open source toolchain (just as some of the silego greenpak's), there's Lattice ice40's on mouser in single-quantity for around 1.50 USD. main drawback to me is they're not 5V tolerant, but there's not much that is these days.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 10:07:53 am
content: Yes for small FPGAs and CPLDs Lattice is a nice cheap alternative.But as soon as you need a big powerful FPGA it is hard to avoid Altera or Xilinx. And you also pay for it appropriately.

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 10:47:33 am
content: Quote from: boB on January 08, 2019, 07:51:21 amIt seems to me that you need to design out Xilinx and intel parts, not because of the company behaviours, simply because those fpga's are just too biglattice/microsemi and Intel/Xilinx products are not interchangable/equivalent, they don't compete against each other, the choice between one or the other should be purely done depending on the applicationIt is almost like choosing between a STM32 microcontroller and a intel Xeon 16 core CPU, sure you can write C software for both of them.there is a bit of overlap in the sense that the biggest lattice fpga's can be comared to the smaller xilinx's ones but that's about it

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 04:58:34 pm
content: I wonder what happens when you develop for example a devboard with a Xilinx FPGA and want to write documentation for it. Do you have to ask them before publishing it and can they forbid to use their name and logo? This would be a show stopper.But the Cyclone 5 in the DE10 Nano looks very nice, too. I could implement afast multichannel ADC with it with 1 GB sample memorywithout too much work. Last time I tried to use the DDR RAM of a Xilinx devboard, I couldn't get it to work. But this was some years ago, maybe it is easier nowadays with Vivado. Last time I used Xilinx ISE, it was worse than Quartus.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 05:30:31 pm
content: Yeah you can get some nice FPGAs on dev boards that include many useful things like memory, ports and LEDs. Never underestimate the usefulness of a bunch of LEDs on a FPGA board.But when it gets to things like DDR memory things get complicated with licensing again. Unless you are using a chip with a hardware DDR3 controller(Not many have it) then you will need to use there soft DDR controller IP and that stuff is not free. It usually gives you a evaluation version of the IP with encrypted source files and a death timer that kills it after an hour of running. To get the full version that you are allowed fully simulate and will run on hardware forever you need to pay a few grand for a license to the DDR3 controller IP or pay a few more grand to buy the full version of the IDE that includes all of that IP...for 1 year before the license expires and you need to pay a few grand again to renew it.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 05:52:28 pm
content: Do people not actually *read* books now? I chose this example for the simple reason I am reading it at the moment.Read the text at the bottom of the page. That's *all* you have to do to keep everyone happy. I could easily choose any other device specific book in my library. It would have a similar section on trademarks somewhere. Publishing houses know they need this. YouTubers don't, so they get scary letters from lawyers.I am not a lawyer. I planned becoming one when I started university, but by the time I got ready for law school it was clear that the legal profession was not what it was in my grandfather's day. So I became a scientist instead.

author: filssavi
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 05:58:31 pm
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on January 08, 2019, 04:58:34 pmProbably yes for multiple reasonswhat companies want to avoid (and I think it is perfectly reasonable) is for anyone to mistake a third party product with a Xilinx one so if you put a xilinx logo on the silkscreen of the pcb (as to imply Xilinx designed the pcb) you can bet your bottom they will sue you to oblivion, same thing if you put a Xilinx logo or use too similar a design in your documentation, basically if you sell a clone/knockoff Xilinx dev board yes they will come after youAnother reason is that both Xilinx and altera have partner programs with third party companies that sell dev boards, system on module, IP’s and so on these products are all tested and certified to meet the producer standards for quality, availability and so on of the producer, by using the logo you are implying that yours is an officially sanctioned product when it really is notAlso when doing a dev board you are selling a product, and so it is commercial, not fair use so trademark laws apply in that case and The producer might be even mandated to sue youDoes this mean you can’t sell a dev board without Xilinx approval, of course not, you can do whatever you want, you can obviously tell customers that the FPGA is Xilinx and include screenshots from vivado or the Xilinx website in your documentation, as long as you don’t use any logos, or if you want to do so you obtain Xilinx permission

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 10:53:27 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on January 08, 2019, 03:31:58 amExactly. People don't have a clue how trademarks work, which seems to be what these people are banking on to exert power they don't have. Imagine not being able to discuss or display brand names for fear of trademark cases filed against you. They'd be able to suppress any unfavourable reviews or webshops selling gear at a too competitive price.That being said, if someone with deep pockets comes after you you're in for a world of hurt. Even if they don't have a case in the slightest.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 10:57:49 pm
content: Quote from: rhb on January 08, 2019, 05:52:28 pmThat's not a requirement. It's one of the ways you can emphasise you're not affiliated with the manufacturer, but it's far from a hard requirement. We haven't seen the actual video, but it sounds like non affiliation should be abundantly clear without that disclaimer.

author: boB
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 11:36:06 pm
content: I also don't use, or like to use newer FPGAs because they don't run at 3.3V or 5V and I have to add extra voltage regulators...I use CPLDs or the Silego Greenpaks because they interface to my 3.3V processor I/O easily and can do 3.3V to 5V level translation as well.There may be a day when I need to use a real FPGA but hopefully that won't be for quite a while OR I will maybe be retired by that time.

author: MT
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 08, 2019, 11:54:14 pm
content: sue sue sue!

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 03:12:54 am
content: Without a link to the video about which Xilinx is complaining, how can we even form an opinion? I'm pretty sure if I use their logo while simultaneously calling their product junk, I might expect a letter. But Dave does this all the time and AFAIK has never received a letter. Hm... There must be more to the story.No, I'm not going to boycott Xilinx, their's are the only FPGAs I use and I certainly don't plan to change that.

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 03:16:29 am
content: Quote from: rstofer on January 09, 2019, 03:12:54 amNote that it also depends on the exact country or even state, but reviews are generally one of the explicitly mentioned fair use scenarios. They can send letters all day long, but no sane lawmaker is going to allow companies to suppress bad reviews through copyright.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 06:19:50 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 08, 2019, 05:52:28 pmThanks, this makes sense. So I probably would get in trouble, if I sell a "Xilinx Zynq devboard" and print a nice Xilinx logo, without permission from Xilinx, but if I sell a "Frank Buss devboard with a Xilinx chip" and print "U1" for the FPGA on the board, and then add the trademark disclaimer, I can do what I want, except maybe cursing too much about the bloated size and speed of Vivado

author: Mr. Scram
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 06:29:53 am
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on January 09, 2019, 06:19:50 amIt depends on the country you're in and selling to, but generally you have to make clear or not suggest you're not affiliated with the company in question. The book disclaimer is one way of doing that, but don't take that as gospel. There are various ways to skin that cat.

author: mickmake
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 08:25:35 am
content: Quote from: Gobi on January 07, 2019, 04:58:14 pmThe whole FPGA world is so used to IP protection, I'm not surprised at this reaction.However, FPGA companies need to start realizing that their business model is fast changing. If they don't adapt to Makers wanting to hack around with FPGAs and produce fully open source/hardware designs, then the Makers will just go off and find a company that does support them.That's how things are done. That's how many businesses become so cocky that they fail to see the writing on the wall - EG: IBM, HP, Microsoft, Apple have all seen the proverbial carpet ripped out from underneath them because they haven't paid attention to the market.So, we just move over to Altera, Lattice, or even Microsemi. I'm lead to believe that Lattice are a LOT more Maker friendly.1-bitsquared & Luke Valenty can attest to this.

author: radioactive
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 09:02:23 am
content: QuoteI would just say that the Lattice parts are *much* more attractive to everyone were they can be used due to cost,current consumption, and mostly because of these awe-inspiring people who have made these parts so nice to work with via a simple makefile:Clifford WolfCotton SeedAnd all the others who contribute to Project Icestorm.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 10:05:49 am
content: From what I gather, none of the FPGA manufacturers have co-operated with the open-source FPGA toolchain effort.If one were to, it would be a big publicity boost - Microchip (Who now own Microsemi) would be an obvious contender, as they are generally Maker-friendly, understand the long-term value of low-volume users and are pretty low-profile in the FPGA world.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 02:23:27 pm
content: Quote from: mickmake on January 09, 2019, 08:25:35 amUm, I would love if this was true, but seriously - if you think there is enough of a "Maker" market to justify the expense (and effort) for opening their high level tools and chips (not $0.50 CPLDs) then you need to put off the Coolaid, I am afraid. The more serious stuff costs in hudreds of USD per chip and it is a very niche market. This isn't Arduino where a clone can be had for $2 delivered and everyone is sticking one into every blinky LED project because it is so simple and cheap to use.For an average "Maker" an FPGA is pretty much completely pointless and irrelevant because their projects don't need them. The devboards and tools have been accessible for a long time (at least for the low end parts) and it is still very rare to see projects using these things. Both because today's microcontrollers tend to be able to do most of what one could ever need and also because the knowledge required to use an FPGA effectively tends to be far beyond what an average hobbyist hacker has. So where is your market?You can't compare this to Microsoft or Apple where it is about software which is primarily a commodity these days and the barrier of entry is fairly low thanks to the free tools, hardware you can buy at every mall and even a monkey being able to write/copy & paste few lines of code. In contrast, you can have as many free tools as you want but a "Maker" is not going to put together an FPGA in their kitchen lab (unlike a PC or Raspberry Pi).And Lattice is "Maker friendly" only because one of their low end FPGA architectures has been reverse engineered by a concerted effort of researchers, not because they have contributed anything to it. In fact, their licenses are equally (if not more) restrictive than e.g. Xilinx's or Altera's.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 02:48:51 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on January 09, 2019, 02:23:27 pmArduino disagrees. They have a board with a SAMD21 and Cyclone 10 now:https://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/MKRVidor4000and for a start, you don't need to know anything about FPGA programming. You can just select one of the pre-compiled libraries for it, even powerful things like a HDMI video output. It's like you have all shields (at least the digital ones) available now (or soon) without buying any special shield.But I think they have a simple web interface as well, and some samples, which allows even hobbyists without the time or knowledge for the big programs, to write simple FPGA configurations.EUR 49.90is a bit pricey, the academic version of a DE0 Nano isn't much more expensive but much more powerful, but if the software is as easy to use as used from Arduino, then it might be a very interesting product for advanced hobbyists.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 02:59:55 pm
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on January 09, 2019, 02:48:51 pmYes, and there has been a Papillio before, Pipistrello, XuLa and what not (good list is here:https://joelw.id.au/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards).That only means that companies are jumping on the bandwagon, not that someone is actually buying andusingthis stuff. Vendors were also betting on things like 3D TVs before - and nobody was buying them. A quick search for projects using e.g. this Vidor Arduino shows none, except for the demos provided by Arduino itself and a lot of advertising/reviews - despite the board being around for over 6 months now.I am certainly glad that this is available because it makes learning FPGAs easier for people who are interested in it (e.g. me) but lets be real about the market size (and its value) here. In addition, these are all low end parts, often lacking any sort of high speed interfaces (one of the major reasons why one would need an FPGA for something) and even when the part has the requisite hw inside, the boards are not fitted with suitable connectors but nonsense such as 0.1" pin headers, PMODs and similar.All major vendors have free (as in beer) versions of their tools available for these low end parts already and would gain exactly nothing by opening them even further. Free "Maker" publicity is not going to bring them e.g. military contracts or high end test equipment market where they are making their money from.Re Vidor programming - if you want to go beyond the 3 or so pre-made libraries that are used from the ARM code, then you need to download Quartus from Intel/Altera and use HDL. There is no other toolchain available that could synthesize the bitstream for it.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 08:52:53 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on January 09, 2019, 02:59:55 pmMy hunch, based on years of doing FPGA designs using all four (Altera/Intel, Xilinx, Microsemi and Lattice) major FPGA vendors' products (and their software and their support), is that none of the four give a shit about Makers and hobbyists and anyone that's not spending big coin buying trays of parts. Makers and hobbyists should be thankful that free versions of the toolsets exist and that Xilinx and Altera maintain popular user forums.There's that old saw that goes, "If the young hobbyist learns Brand [$BRAND]'s devices and software, when s/he gets on the job s/he can push the organization towards that brand's parts." And that's bullshit. Any company that already does FPGAs already has a preferred vendor which won't change unless there's a Damn Good Reason to do so.(That's not to say we, as professional engineers, should always stick with just one vendor or one family. We should always be looking for alternatives, and as our stature in our work organizations grows, we can and should use other parts. But the freshout engineer won't get that option.)---------------------------------------------------------I think it's great that hobbyists and kids and other non-professionals want to learn how to design with FPGAs. (I also think it's great that hobbyists and kids and others want to learn how to program microcontrollers and do all sorts of fun stuff, which is why I encourage kids to get an Arduino kit.) But what is missing in the discussion is that FPGAs are a means to an end. They are an implementation, conceptually the same as a board or box full of TTL devices, or discrete-transistor logic, or hell, tubes. The topic for discussion is really, "I want to learn to do synchronous digital logic circuit design."And learning how to design with FPGAs is a lot easier if you come at it with a strong background in digital logic.So for those who are interested in learning -- there are several good textbooks on digital logic design, start there. Perhaps there are online courses in the subject (I haven't looked). Maybe you can audit a course at the local university. A lot of colleges are teaching logic-design courses and are using FPGAs as the implementation.And for those who are less interested in learning the subject, but rather they have an idea or a project in mind, sure, get an FPGA board from one of the many purveyors of such things. But don't be surprised to discover that the learning curve is long and shallow and there are a lot of things you have to learn before you can actually do the one thing you want to do.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 09:05:22 pm
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on January 09, 2019, 08:52:53 pmAnd all of those companies are of course many decades old and FPGA choice was made by godly existence and not real people... Did you hear about such thing as startup? Many of those made well established players bite the dust.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 09:14:57 pm
content: A bit of the problem is also that FPGAs tend to be useful only in pretty advanced projects.Typical maker projects are just gluing together existing modules and copy pasting some arduino code together. The usual arduino user wouldn't even bother to learn the C language properly, just enough to copy paste and randomly figure out how to get something together. At the same time microcontrolers and SBCs like the raspberry keep getting more powerful, letting them do some pretty impressive stuff.The only sort of projects where you do still need a FPGA is places where you move around very large amounts of data. So things like live video processing or running anything with a very fast ADC or DAC in it such as a fancy SDR or test equipment. All of these tend to be projects that involve >1 month of just programming to get basic functionality running. The extra complexity of FPGA design and the low level nature of it makes it a lot more work to learn than just C, so makers cant be expected to learn it if they can't even get themselves to learn C.Tho in my opinion getting an electronics engineering degree should involve at some point designing and building a custom CPU from scratch on a FPGA.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 09:37:32 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on January 09, 2019, 09:05:22 pmAnd how many startups actually use FPGAs and manage to survive long enough for the product to see the market? FPGA is a very expensive solution for niche needs, you won't find it in cheap consumer gear, for example.I think the only recent exceptions that I am aware of are the OSVR HDK 1.0 head mounted display kit (in HDK 2.0 they have removed the FPGA as part of cost cutting because nothing used it even in the 1.0 version) and the project is dead (AFAIK) today. Its former CEO is now head of marketing for that laser phone charger thingamajig that Dave made a video on. One other consumer product that uses an FPGA (Lattice Ice40 I believe) is the HTC Vive and its controllers - as part of the Lighthouse tracking system where the thing is used to measure pulse time from the 30-something photodiodes. But that's gear that costs $500+.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 09:50:48 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on January 09, 2019, 09:37:32 pmNot that many. But some of them survive and become big companies. And by the time they become big companies they already may have FPGA preference inherited from early days. To name a few widely known, say Tesla, Spacex, Siglent. As already said many of applications are quite specialized therefore those companies are not that widely known.https://angel.co/fpga-1/jobs

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 09, 2019, 10:02:55 pm
content: Also it's not like it would be necessarily hobbyist who will use free tools and free lessons. It may be experienced engineer who has never done anything FPGA related at day job. Then learns on it's own and the uses it in practice, probably at startup.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 12:35:03 am
content: Quote from: Berni on January 09, 2019, 09:14:57 pmWhat would be nice is some sort of maker-oriented device or subsystem that contains a FPGA but is still easy to use - e.g. a drone flight controller or 3D printer/CNC motherboard. The average maker isn't going to do anything with the low levels of the FPGA but that's not the point.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 06:19:52 am
content: Well a CNC controller does have some use for FPGAs. It can be used to interpolate between the movement nodes very accurately in real time and generate very timing precise step signals. There are a few that use it, but most others are directly run from a microcontroller because the accuracies of the hobby printers, router, engravers are just not high enough for the sloppy MCU control to make much of a difference. And if you know what you are doing in terms of programing you can get rather tight timings out of MCUsIn terms of what is actually using FPGAs. Well all of these high speed camera startups such as Chronos and similar have to use a FPGA to move data around. Sometimes game console mod chips for older consoles might include a FPGA to fiddle with some communication bus in real time. There are also some retro gaming video upscalers that turn console video into HDMI, one in particular even did deconvolution in real time to fix blurrynes in N64 graphics. Ben heck also had a good use for a FPGA where it was used to turn the LCD signals in a GameBoy into VGA video so that it could be shown on a big screen.Also i have spotted a fair bit of programmable logic in test equipment. Some of HP/Agilent PSUs and electronic loads have Xilinx FPGAs in them and here and there you sometimes find a CPLD for doing glue logic. Sometimes they modernize an old instrument design and minimize all the separate peripherals of a 68000 CPU down into a single FPGA chip. This makes the board much smaller while still running the same firmware. A lot of high end networking equipment also has FPGAs in there because its the only way to get so much data around.When you strike a deal directly with a FPGA manufacturer you can get a big FPGA with transcievers and everythyng for 30 USD. But they will of course want you to buy a pretty large quantity. While Lattice chips can be so cheap that it even makes sense to use them for fairly dumb tasks that are simply annoying in nature for a MCU.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 06:37:42 am
content: QuoteAlso low end but specialized networking equipment - I've seen a funny use of an FPGA where they needed a lot (30+) of serial lines transmitted via a single Ethernet connection. Basically they just used a Zynq - the ARM bit did the networking and linuxing, the FPGA managed all of the serial lines.There's a lot of places where there are FPGAs used. It's true that most of the time it's a product of a larger team/company, but that is not a rule - and should not be.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 06:44:46 am
content: Yes i should have mentioned that too.They are very useful when you have to do a weird thing that nobody made a purpose built chip for because its such an obscure case. Or you need to interface to some weird chip or bus that doesn't speak any protocol a MCU or MPU might have. For example almost all ADCs and DACs >200MSPS have a proprietary LVDS bus on them that your only hope is to connect to a FPGA.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 07:42:51 am
content: WOW, this is called nominative fair use, the Xilinx lawyers had better look that up.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_use

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 07:56:10 am
content: If @IntelFPGA or @latticesemi are smart they will put out an official response condemning this unprecedented attack on creators

author: Nerull
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 09:25:07 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 08, 2019, 05:52:28 pmMaybe people just read better sources than you - companies are not *forced* to send C&Ds about any use of their trademark to keep their trademark. That's just trivially wrong.If another tissue company tries to sell boxes of tissues named Kleenexes, than yes, Kleenex needs to do something about it. They do not, however, need to send C&D notices to the random guy in a store who tells someone to go pick up a box of Kleenexes. They are not required to send C&Ds to anyone who talks about Kleenexes. They are not required to send C&Ds to anyone who writes a how-to guide on using Kleenexes. They are not required to send C&Ds to anyone who reviews Kleenexes. They are not required to send C&Ds to me for writing this post, because I am not attempting to misrepresent my association with the Kleenex brand.Youtube is filled with educational videos on trademarked products, and somehow all these other companies manage not to lose their trademarks without sending C&Ds everywhere.

author: Daixiwen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 09:32:11 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 10, 2019, 07:56:10 amI don't think they care, at least for Intel. IntelFPGA's free support (a.k.a. "community forums") is a complete mess. After more than 6 months working on it, it's barely usable and still not on par with Altera's old forum, which was already terrible. Nowadays the only contact between Intel and the real world is through FAEs (thank god for them).Altera was kind of interested from time to time with hobbyists and creators, giving free kits, but so far I haven't seen that behaviour from Intel.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 10:03:10 am
content: Intel was doing the Edison, Joule, Galileo... etc boards that are targeted at makers. But it never really caught on all that much for some reason. I think the pricing and ease of use was not there.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 03:17:23 pm
content: Quote from: Nerull on January 10, 2019, 09:25:07 amI spent most of my career as a solo consultant. So I *had* to know the basics of IP law and contracts. I have a number of books on intellectual property law intended for consultants and entrepeneurs including "West's Business Law". I suspect the people you refer to have not read *anything* on the subject.The fact that someone does not get a C&D does not mean they won't. And they may well get one and not freak out the way the guy in the start of the thread did. It's not as if they have to stop what they are doing. They just need to insert an acknowledgement that the trademark belongs to someone else. You've probably seen them, but didn't understand enough IP law to know why they were there.The loss of a trademark only happens when someone starts using it, the owner sues and the infringer shows that there was a long history of the company failing to enforce the trademark. And that is "game over" for the trademark owner. There is no "do over" allowed. The trademark is now in the public domain and *anyone* can use it for anything they want. Sending out those C&D letters shows active attempts at enforcement. In a case like this merely keeping a record of sending the letter is probably all that they would need to do.In short, what you see on YouTube only proves that it is on YouTube. It proves *nothing* else.As I pointed out previously the cure is trivial. It's an explicit acknowledgement of trademark ownership. That can be a single line of text at the bottom of a title screen.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 06:06:52 pm
content: Does anyone else think that FPGA is like one of the biggest dogs to work with in the electronics world?Massively complicated, closed software (and jesus I thought C compilers were bad), hard to use, expensive, difficult to solder, windows can probably destroy your design, etc.I think I would rather work with any other component then a FPGA if I could avoid it. I think they need all the help they can get to get rid of all the engineering questions associated with them. If they had advanced open source software I might try it. Having to do all the complications in a closed ecosystem?? NO THANKSI think when business people decide to make something, and they hear 'we need to get a FPGA guy for this' they think 'lets make something else'.I don't even WANT to learn it because what I am going to get stuck in some kind of closed ecosystem. Even assembly is kind of crappy because you can learn like ATMEL or PIC but it can kinda transfer over. C is better. For all I know learning one of those FPGA systems is like learning freaking FORTRAN!!! What is going to happen eventually with that kind of system is someone is gonna go out of business then you can get a fake ass 'wizard' job maintaining some bloated legacy system some where. I don't want that kind of career path. A open standard for the FPGA industry would alleviate this quite a bit. Until they start making 'build your own ASIC online flash workshop'.I swear in like 20 years you will have some company that tells you "we have the last two remaining workstations ON EARTH that can handle this version of windows with these updates with this FPGA software from a defunct vendor". They might also have a dedicated acquisitions person that goes out to abandoned siberian oil mining operations to look for replacement hardware and negotiate with the locals for firewood.I already have a pretty much dedicated computer that seems to work well with a particular PIC programmer and PICs without the need for voodoo rituals. I can't imagine what can happen with a complex FPGA compared to a simple 8 bit MCU. You can't even get software to work on different RASPI versions sometimes.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 06:11:49 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on January 10, 2019, 06:19:52 amGiven that the motor control is almost always done by dedicated chips (Allegro or Trinamic drivers are popular) the only thing that the MCU has to be doing is interpret the G-code and calculate the steps. FPGA won't help you any there, the MCU is perfectly fine to send the necessary pulses and the stepper motors don't really care that much if there is a bit of a jitter in the signal here and there.And even if you are using closed loop control, with encoders and what not, then you are doing it using the hardware timers - both to read the encoders and to generate the motor signals. Typically you would have a controller per motor/encoder pair talking to the main controller board.I don't see what difference it would make to implement a timer on an FPGA or use a hardware timer in an MCU (assuming it is a decent timer designed for encoders and/or motor control so you don't need to rely e.g. on interrupts to reload it). I don't see where you would get any "sloppy timing" there. Even the expensive industrial machines don't use FPGAs for this - there is no need for it there.Quote from: Berni on January 10, 2019, 06:19:52 amSure but this are hardly projects that would make someone like Xilinx or Intel go suddenly bonkers in the fear of missing out on a market. Which was the point of the discussion, not whether or not FPGAs have their uses (of course they do).

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 06:32:56 pm
content: what if you use LVDT or something for sensing ?

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 07:14:35 pm
content: QuoteBoth Verilog and VHDL are well defined standard languages. What kind of standard would you like?QuoteGood luck doing something useful with anything above, say, 50 megasamples per second with anything else but an FPGA, or a heavy duty DSP processor (which are generally just as proprietary). There are things that you simply need an FPGA - or an ASIC, which is much, MUCH worse.QuoteNot really. The concepts, understanding and skills are transferable. Yes, there are proprietary bits, but there are similar, or equivalent systems regardless of the vendor. I'm currently using Xilinx stuff. True, a switchover to say, Altera would be pain in the ass, but it would be similar to switching from AVRs to PICs. Sure, some things would have to be redone, but the concepts stay the same.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 07:25:09 pm
content: Yes you do have the Trinamic chips to do actual motor driving, but you have to feed them with accurate step pulses. Sure you can generate pretty accurate pulses with a timer peripheral on a MCU but quickly calculating things and reloading the timer and doing it for all axis at the same time while parsing G code at the same time can get pretty hard. Its fine for a little plastic squirting 3D printer. Its not fine anymore when you get to a big profesional CNC machine.Those big proper CNC machines have feedback controlled servo motors that have control loops running in the digital domain, they move at speeds and resolutions that would require a stepper to drive step pulses in its input measured in MHz. The motion controller for it has to calculate arc motions in 3D space with very high accuracy or the error will show in the surface finish of the metal part you are milling. All the motion also has to always be running at the same speed, its not acceptable to slow down in a high detail area where you might get thousands of G code commands coming in per second, this can again affect surface finish. High speed tapping operations involve synchronizing the spindle going at thousands of RPM to all the other movement. All of this starts to get into some serious electronics with plenty of processing grunt for it.The speed and responsiveness of FPGAs is simply unparalleled by any other solution. But for the vast majority of cases a microprocessor is more than good enugh.That being said FPGAs are indeed a pain in the ass to work with. So when you do end up using a FPGA its likely because it couldn't easily be done by any other solution. Eather due to lack of processing power or being too big and power hungry to get the needed processing power, or just simply not having the right kind of port to plug the weird bus into.Learning FPGA coding is actually not that hard. The HDL languages are indeed a piece of shit but the language itself is not that difficult. More of the difficulty comes out of figuring out how to implement your idea in digital logic since flipflops are a lot dumber than a CPU. Also there is a ton of documentation to dig trough to find out how any of this works. In the end its more about learning digital circuit design theory than actually learning the language.Also the things you learn about one vendors FPGAs can be applied to other vendors pretty easily. They all use the same language, the FPGAs mostly work identically inside, the IDE workflows are the same, just the buttons look different and are in different spots. Tho porting code from one vendor to another is a major pain but it can be done.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 08:31:58 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 10, 2019, 06:06:52 pmHUH? Have you ever done an FPGA or CPLD design? What's the alternative? A whole board stuffed with 74xx chips? Revisions with wire-wrap wires?I will admit there's a learning curve to anybody's tools and the HDL language you choose. But, I have to say I am now kicking myself for being so slow to adopt the technology.Have you used a logic simulator to check that a VHDL file does what you want it to do before even looking at real hardware?I actually PREFER an FPGA to a micro. With the simulator, and the methodology of HDL design, you can be much better assured of predictable FPGA functionality, with no really crazy side effects of one process/subroutine interfering with some other one due to mixed up variables or whatever.I have several dozen CPLD and FPGA designs I'm currently manufacturing/supporting.As for soldering, there are MANY smaller FPGAs that are in reasonable quad packs, starting at about 100 pins. There are some CPLDs in 44 pin packages.As for Windows, well i do all my CPLD/FPGA work in Linux. Yes, there are some slight installation quirks, but I still use some very old Xilinx ise design packages, so I can support some older FPGA families that are the cheapest. $10 each without internal config PROM, or $13 with internal FLASH PROM.Jon

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 08:41:53 pm
content: The alternative to FPGAs is discrete ECL logic. Physical size makes that a lot slower even if it could switch as fast. This is why hard cores on the chip with the PL fabric are such a big advantage. The signal paths are much shorter and far better behaved.So far I've only been reading documentation, but I don't see anything particularly intimidating about FPGAs. It's a great mass of glue logic on a crossbar switch matrix. The routing problem is NP-hard, so they use a bunch of heuristics to lay things out. I'm sure the algorithms are quite interesting involving both convex optimization, Karnaugh mapping and computational geometry. The only real problem is the jargon is very vendor specific. But I bought a DE-10 Nano to accompany my Zybo Z7-20 so I can test my Verilog code on both when I write it. I'm sure the tool chains will have me pulling my hair out, but that's true of most software these days.The Zynq supports partial reconfiguration. So you can load a complex digital filter and get an output every cycle. Need a different filter? No worries, mate. Just load that filter instead. The only other way to do that is an ASIC.FPGAs are a compromise between the flexibility of a CPU and the performance of an ASIC. TANSTAFL

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 09:20:39 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on January 10, 2019, 06:11:49 pmI think the most common config of linuxcnc/mach3/pathpilot IO is a Mesa card which uses a Xilinx FPGAit is the most flexible solution, need another timer - just add one, need more quadrature decoders - just add themand some would argue that control loops implemented in "HW" adds a bit of safety and reliability compared to software

author: mickmake
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 10:22:29 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 10, 2019, 06:06:52 pmA lot of work is being done on OSS toolchains for FPGAs. It won't be long before we have grandma noobies cutting and pasting FPGA blocks from websites.Don't normally plug my own videos, but here's an example of how far the OSS tools have come.https://youtu.be/CeH5t3GS4Uc?t=656

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 11:13:43 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 10, 2019, 06:06:52 pmYes, famously so, and that is one of the reasons why they are not popular for general purpose stuff.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 11:17:50 pm
content: Quote from: rhb on January 10, 2019, 03:17:23 pmNope. In this case Xilinx have said that having their logo next to their competitors is hugely damaging to their brand and they are demanding him to remove all content.Funny how there are literally millions of examples (which is standard industry practice BTW) were people put out educational content like this and none of the other companies go after them, nor do they lose their trademarks because they haven't enforced them. Normative Fair Use, look it up, you don't have the actively defend against that or lose your trademark, that's not true.Xilinx are being complete dicks.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 11:39:49 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 10, 2019, 11:17:50 pmthe way big corps usually work I think it is more likely a case of Xilinx needing to tell their law firm that they pay themto protect their trademarks not to ruin it by acting like dicks

author: a59d1
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 11:42:51 pm
content: Why does he have to comply with them? Are they threatening to sue?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 11:57:20 pm
content: Quote from: a59d1 on January 10, 2019, 11:42:51 pmHe doesn't, he's free to continue do anything he wants, they won't come around with guns and force him to stop.And they are free to sue him or anyone else at any time they please for anything what so ever. Until he compelled to do something by a court order, he has not done anything illegal and does not need to stop it.QuoteYes, that's what the lawyers are for, and they have threatened as much by saying that he has caused harm to their brand, that's the first salvo.I'd go as far to say that it's clear they do not like his courses and they are trying to take him down and protect their "authorised" course providers. No actual evidence of this of course, but it seems pretty obvious, which is why it's likely you won't see them go after anyone else.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 12:34:29 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 10, 2019, 11:17:50 pmWell, Xilinx can demand whatever they wish, but that does not mean they will get it. Of course, google is involved, so anything is possible. But I can't see a court of law siding with Xilinx. That would require that the courts let the loser suppress product comparisons. A good friend of mine is a lawyer from a family of lawyers going back over 150 years. I'll ask him to get me some citations from American case law.There is no basis for the allegation that having the logos next to each other is damaging to either brand. This is idiot junior lawyer BS. Xilinx can demand an acknowledgement that they own the trademarks. But that is all. I did not become a lawyer because I did not want to deal with such people.If I were the presenter, I'd edit out all mention of Xilinx and focus on the Altera line. Except to say that Xilinx objected to being included and are therefore omitted. I'd also send a copy of the Xilinx letter to slashdot, the register, wired, EDN and a few other major tech news outlets. With a CC to the Xilinx CEO of course.I did not watch more than a couple of minutes of the video because it struck me as a severe overreaction. Some questions:Where is the presenter located?Does he hold an academic post?What other work has he done on the subject of FPGAs e.g. books or papers?In light of recent google demonetizing actions relative to EEVblog and other technical video blogs, it may be time to launch an alternative platform and remove all the EEVblog content from YouTube. Given the heavy weighting that google gives EEVblog references, that might get google's attention. The EEVblog audience is a valuable property. Quite aside from being an amazing group of people.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 12:49:36 am
content: Ok, I now have more information on this.Xilinx are upset at their logo being used in videos on a third party website course provider by another author which Robert also advertises on his Fedeval website (not Youtube). They have not asked Robert to remove his own material.C&D letters were sent to both Robert and the third party course provider, and Xilinx have said they want the logo removed, and that the presence of the logo has caused "substanital harm" to Xilinx.It seems as though they are able to re-upload the videos with the logo removed or blurred out, and (I'm guessing) have no issue (or know they have no legal leg to stand on) with incidental use of the Xilinx name being spoken or otherwise shown in the videos.So as I suspected, it seems like Xilinx are trying to protect their official big course creators and are using their logo as a means to do that.The problem here is the dick move of engaging lawyers with minimal to no information what the actual issue is, instead of just contacting the authors direct with an issue they had.It is clear they are not protecting their actual trademark here, the official intent is to ensure that people don't think that any unathorised online courses are confused with official Xilinx approved courses. The real reason is undoubtedly that they don't like the unofficial courses, and the logo trademark is an easy way to screw with the little providers.Perhaps a complaint was made by one of the official content prodivers about these "unofficial" low cost courses undercutting their multi-thousand dollar courses, and Xilinx are trying to in turn protect them. I'd put money on this as I've seen it happen with other companies.I'd bet that Xilinx hope the small "unofficial" providers get in a huff and simply remove all their material and never do it again. That was the point engaging the lawyer.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 12:55:44 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 11, 2019, 12:34:29 amIt doesn't make any difference what the court ruling would be because it would never get that far because Robert would not be able to afford the costs in defending such a case that Xilinx with their deep pockets could make drag on for years. That's how it works and Xilinx know it.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 01:20:06 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 11, 2019, 12:34:29 amLOL, the EEVblog means half a bees nat to Google or Youtube.The demonetising was a bit of a pain, but it's been solved now, I haven't had a video demonetised in a long time now.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 01:29:25 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 11, 2019, 12:49:36 amsure it isn't just Xilinx's law firm acting like YouTube's copyright violation bot ?

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 01:34:50 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on January 11, 2019, 01:29:25 amI doubt they'd have an active mandate to go out and search for content that competes against Xilinx's official partners.Occam's razor, it's more likely that one of these companies found these courses that are 1/10th the price and complained.https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 01:36:44 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 11, 2019, 12:55:44 amThat can be a very expensive gambit to play against a good lawyer. If Robert's lawyer can make a case for malice, it can lead to rather considerable penalties. While lawyers can drag such things out for decades, good ones don't have to do a lot of work.In the end it comes down to what legal rules apply. I'm familiar with US law. Generally you have to sue in the defendants jurisdiction. This is why contracts commonly specify what jurisdiction disputes are to be settled in.The sum total of all the electronics related videos might be a different story. Frankly I neither know nor care. I much prefer books over videos. It has to be unavailable as a book before I will watch a video.But what can I say. I was the guy in the 2nd row with his feet over the back of the first row chair eating oranges through the entire lecture. I'd already read the text book cover to cover and was just there to interrogate the instructor on minor details not well explained in the text. I had one instructor who thought I was goofing off. So he peppered me with questions for a couple of weeks. I always knew the answer, so eventually he left me alone.Years later we discussed it. He'd never run into anyone who read all their text books cover to cover within a few weeks of the start of classes.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 01:40:15 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 11, 2019, 01:34:50 ambut they may have a mandate to go after content that show Xilinx logos in a way that they think could be misunderstoodto be official

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 02:15:02 am
content: Quote from: rhb on January 11, 2019, 01:36:44 amHe'd still go bankrupt before he could win the case either way, it's going to costs several hundred thousand dollars.Proving "malice" would be much more difficult than you think, as Xilinx have every right to go after people who use their Trademarks.And possibly you are splitting the case into two, the original Trademark dispute which doesn't just go away when you accuse them of Malice, possibly even a separate counter suit for "malice"?The way it works is that the big company combards the small defence lawyer with so much crap that theymustrespond to in-depth, that the time it takes to do that eats up all the defendants savings.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 02:16:43 am
content: Quote from: langwadt on January 11, 2019, 01:40:15 amI've never heard of that happening, but I have heard of the opposite case of official partners complaining. My money is on that.

author: OwO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 02:58:26 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 10, 2019, 06:06:52 pmI started with Altera FPGAs and had amassed a big repository of various VHDL modules. When I moved to Xilinx everything just worked. Try that with any microcontroller. As soon as you need to do any I/O (even simple crap like SPI) it's vendor specific and can even differ between device families from the same vendor. The GPIOs on stm32f0 work completely differently than on the stm32f1. It's close to impossible to write portable code.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 04:06:40 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 10, 2019, 11:13:43 pmWell, given the amount of logic one can stuff into even a moderate-size FPGA, one shouldn't be surprised that the tools are complex and the special rules for making the things work are not trivial.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 04:19:15 am
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 10, 2019, 06:06:52 pmI can see that you really haven't had much real experience doing FPGA designs for products which actually ship to customers.The products I work on literally are not possible without FPGAs. High-speed converters, multiple data paths, high-speed communications to a remote server, and a whole bunch of other stuff to make the product work. And the bulk of the logic is on PCBs the size of credit cards.If what you work on is not that complex or doesn't have the speed and the channel-count and size requirements, then you don't need to do FPGAs. And that's fine -- billions of dollars in electronic products ship every year with nothing more complicated than a 50-cent microcontroller doing the work.QuoteI think that business people decide what market they want to be in, and whether their products are sufficiently interesting to that market, and then they hire engineers who can do the design work. It's not like there are only ten of us FPGA guys in the entire country.QuoteWhile it's true that there are lots of aspects of the chips that are proprietary, it's not hard at all to go between toolsets and devices. But you have to want to learn, and you have to have a reason to do so. There's nothing inherently wrong about doing Xilinx-only projects.QuoteExcept when you have to deal with the details of how SiLab's timers work vs ST's vs Atmel's, and they're all different, and very little of the code you wrote for one can transfer over because the parts are all completely different. And even though there are attempts with, say, ARM Cortex parts, to have some commonality, each vendor has its own special sauce which makes porting annoying.QuoteThat's it, in bold -- you DON'T know, yet you're happy to come onto a professional forum visited by people who actually DO know and you just start talking without making any sense. Just because it's all too hard for YOU to do doesn't mean that a lot of engineers make a living working with these devices.You have choices. You can continue to do whatever it is that you do, and if you're making a living at it, great. Or you can spend the time to learn the tools and the parts and if a project or employer needs an FPGA, you can step up and do the work.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 04:56:41 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 11, 2019, 02:15:02 amI had a chat with my friend who confirmed my assessment in the context of American law and legal precedents. The malice aspect would only come into play in the assessment of penalties, not before. That part is iffy, but the potential of treble damages and legal fees will give even big corporations pause. At least if anyone with any brains is paying attention.English law (which is what American law is based on) is a combination of three elements:LanguageLogicPrecedentOvercoming precedent is difficult as it requires proving the logic of the prior decision was faulty or the facts of the present case are different.Judges can recognize when a plaintiff is merely attempting to bankrupt the defendant and a good attorney will make a point of calling attention to tactics intended solely to exhaust the defendant's resources. Very few judges will allow that as it makes it likely their judgement will be overturned on appeal. Having your judgements overturned is "career limiting".I've read enough contracts that I know for a fact that a large number of modern lawyers cannot write a correct sentence in the English language. I dealt with one oil and gas lease which had a 160+ word "sentence" in 6 point type. I don't recall the exact details of that contract, but I struck out many lines and entire sections in numerous lease contracts I reviewed for my parents. And this was routine with my employment contracts. I'd mark up the client's proposed contract, send it to my lawyer and then discuss the ramifications of the various clauses on the phone. After which I submitted an amended contract. I never had the amended contracts rejected.In some respects this conversation reminds me of people who won't try to learn mathematics because they might fail. Conflating the law produces the same result as conflating electronics or mathematics. Once you mash everything into a nonsensical jumble it looks far more intimidating than it really is.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 05:27:53 am
content: Quote from: Bassman59 on January 11, 2019, 04:19:15 amQuite a few modern microcontrollers - most notably a few new PICs and the Cypress PSoC series - have some programmable logic to allow unusual port I/O that previously required some form of external logic. I see that as the start of microcontrollers gaining FPGA-like abilities. What I would like to see is a low cost FPGA with a hard microcontroller inside - it seems like the only options currently available are to use an external microcontroller (more cost/space, limited I/O interconnectivity) or to inefficiently create a soft core in the FPGA and significantly increase the design size.Make that low cost enough and it will be a real hit among advanced microcontroller developers. Now when they have to interface some weird device that's timing sensitive, rather than try to figure out how to (mis)use one of the peripherals to generate the waveforms or bit bang it in software while having to contend with making it work with the interrupts, they just program some logic to do exactly what they want.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 09:15:10 am
content: I just received this email from Xilinx - not sure if in response to this thread or my tweet , guessing the latter :Quote

author: emece67
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 11:29:59 am
content: .

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 12:31:09 pm
content: Xilinx responded to myself and Robert, and it seems others as well:Quote

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 04:09:33 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on January 08, 2019, 05:30:31 pmThe irony is that Xilinx is the only FPGA vendor that provides you DDR2/3 memory controller IP FOR FREE with no strings attached! Along with 130+ of other free IPs in their library.

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 04:17:28 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 11, 2019, 05:27:53 amMicroblaze core in MCU configuration takes about 2k LUT and 2k FFs (that's including interrupt controller through you can skip it if your project doesn't need it), so you can fit a couple of them even to the smallest Spartan-7. And in this configuration they easily reach 150 MHz clock speed even on a slowest speed grade.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 04:49:26 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on January 10, 2019, 11:17:50 pmI think a have a few boards somewhere that has Altera, xilinx and Actel FPGA's , all on the same board... There may be some Lattice parts on there as well. He could use a picture of those ....

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 05:06:22 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on January 10, 2019, 06:32:56 pmHaven't seen those being used in CNC machines.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 05:09:32 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on January 11, 2019, 05:27:53 amIn a nutshell, that is why Intel bought Altera.QuoteIt's the "low-cost" criterion that is the problem. It might be that the packaging that melds the micro and the FPGA fabric is "expensive," so it's warranted only on the high-end of things (think Zync). Bumping up a size of FPGA to accommodate a soft core might still have you in a chip that's less expensive than one with a hard core processor.QuoteI suppose the example here is Cypress PSoC, parts with which I admit that I have no experience.I've done all of the possible combinations here: separate FPGA and processors talking to each other over some kind of standard bus. I've done PicoBlaze and MicroBlaze and even 8051 soft-cores embedded in the FPGA. I did a design with the Virtex-4 with the on-board PowerPC. I suppose at some point I'll do a Zync design. And I've done stuff which could well have been done in a microcontroller and just did it all in VHDL in the FPGA. What was chosen for each design depended on board space, relative complexity of each part of the design, and of course other external elements. What did the design actually need, what made the most sense? This is the part of engineering that's rarely talked about but is vital for a design to be successful.Anyway, the FPGA vendors will decide what they will build based on what their biggest customers want, and we get to use whatever they end up making.

author: FrankBuss
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 05:17:52 pm
content: Quote from: asmi on January 11, 2019, 04:17:28 pm2k LUTs is already a lot. If you don't need it fast, and if you have some BRAM to spare, the second winner for the RISC-V contestmanaged to implement it with only 165 LUT, and he is still optimizing it. This might even fit in one of the smaller MAX10 FPGA, and it is a full 32 bit core.

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 05:35:37 pm
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on January 11, 2019, 05:17:52 pm2k LUT is nothing. I don't even look at FPGA that have less than 10k LUTs as they are useless for my purposes. Especially since Xilinx provides a complete set of peripheral IPs so you can literally build an entire system without writing a single like of HDL code, and - more importantly - they also provide a complete software toolchain with all drivers and libraries needed.I'm also working on my very own RV64 core for fun, but I doubt it would even be as useful and have as complete infrastructure as one that comes for free for Microblaze.

author: radioactive
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 06:00:34 pm
content: There is also this one (picorv32) that has been tested on multiple vendor's platforms. It has also been used on an ASIChttps://content.riscv.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Wed-1142-RISCV-Tim-Edwards.pdfhttps://github.com/cliffordwolf/picorv32As for lower-cost, I'm finding an stm32h7 + 8K-LUT Lattice part to be quite a powerful combination. Lower cost (relative to Zynq), no DDR memory routing, possible to do 4 layers if not all pins are needed, stm32h7 400MHz core appears to be comparable to a single core of the low-end Zynq for DSP application. In my opinion, this is pretty close to solving that middle area that has been missing.

author: antti
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 06:02:56 pm
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on January 11, 2019, 05:17:52 pmI'ts a trick, but yes it is possible to run full RV32I complicant RISC-V in any FPGA/CPLD with 640 LUT or more. This includes almost all FPGA's ! Intel 10M02 is a bit hard target as it can not init RAM's but also still doable. 165 Xilinx LUT is pipelined 8 bit microengine based implementation without optimizations. Rewritten from scratch non-pipelined version is going to be less 70 LUT - for full SoC running multithreading Zephyr RTOS at about 1 Dhrystone MIPS.Correction to Microblaze metrics: Microblaze MCS takes 644 LUT.

author: asmi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 07:18:46 pm
content: Quote from: antti on January 11, 2019, 06:02:56 pmI was talking about "full" Microblaze (not MCS) with GPIO and Interrupt controller modules as bare core isn't all that useful in practical situations.

author: antti
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 07:20:38 pm
content: Quote from: asmi on January 11, 2019, 07:18:46 pmI knowfull microblaze can also be below 2000, I just did give 644 as the "bottom" line metrics.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2019, 02:31:25 pm
content: Quote from: janoc on January 09, 2019, 09:37:32 pmChronos camera, uh, huh? I think he uses Lattice part in there.

author: janoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2019, 04:22:33 pm
content: Quote from: Yansi on January 13, 2019, 02:31:25 pmChronos is hardly consumer gear.

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2019, 05:18:14 pm
content: Quote from: FrankBuss on January 11, 2019, 05:17:52 pmQuite amazing you can fit anything useful (a 32bit core) in 165 LUTs. I could fit just a stupid UART transmitter with a LED display controller in that amount. But let me tell you - I am not a big friend with VHDL... yet.

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 12:06:27 am
content: If you want this sort of thing to stop, the trick isn't go after Xilinx, it's go after the lawyers that put their name to the letter. Report them to the bar association for legal harassment, for what is clearly fair-use. Next time Xilinx go to do it, their lawyers will stop them, rather than just blindly sending out letter.

author: cepwin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 12:21:45 am
content: I'm on Mr. Feranec's side on this one. He is demonstrating their product to help folks use it and of course he is showing the product that has the logo, etc. If this is a violation o copyright than any review video or educational video about a particular product is. They should be glad for the free publicity and advertisement for their product. So next time he'll use a competitor's product and when the folks who learn from his video need to use something in a real project they'll choose the competitor's project. This is why anyone and download and play with Oracle free....they want DBA's and developers to get to know their product so when it's time to buy something for production use they buy Oracle.

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 12:33:13 am
content: Quote from: cepwin on January 15, 2019, 12:21:45 amdid you miss the reply from Xilinx posted by both Mike and Dave on the previous page?

author: Yansi
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 01:17:25 am
content: BTW, where are the Xilinx FPGA lessons in question, that has angered the Xilinx lawyers? I've just done a quick googling and could not find them. Maybe a wrong buzzword? Or have they been removed?