Low Cost MCU+FPGA to play with? (NOT PSOC!) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 08:39:37 am
content: Is there a list of low cost MCU+FPGA devices?I am intrigued by the gowin GW1NS, but i can't find a devboard nor the device itself (also blueskull hited that it may go EOL pretty soon)I am not really interested in PSOC, i never got the appeal

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:15:39 am
content: Quote from: JPortici on April 30, 2021, 08:39:37 amWhat is your 'low cost' budget?

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:34:34 am
content: Smartfusion 2 board maybe?https://www.digikey.be/product-detail/en/M2S010-MKR-KIT/1100-1288-ND/6709124?utm_campaign=buynow&utm_medium=aggregator&curr=eur&utm_source=octopart

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:52:34 am
content: Uh, sure. To me low cost could be from 5 to 10-12 euro in singles

author: martinribelotta
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 09:24:48 pm
content: QuickLogic have an interesting product called EOS3 that is an eFPGA+CortexM4 in same die:https://www.quicklogic.com/products/soc/eos-s3-microcontroller/This vendor is very interesting due to adoption of FLOSS tools for eFPGA syntesishttps://www.quicklogic.com/software/qorc-mcu-efpga-fpga-open-source-tools/You can obtain chips in mouser at least and the cost is around 6usd in qty of 1:https://www.mouser.com/new/crowd-supply/quicklogic-eos-s3-mcu-efpga-socs/Or an eval board from sparkfunhttps://www.crowdsupply.com/sparkfun/thing-plus-quicklogic-eos-s3PD: I not work on QuickLogic and not do not receive payment for this but I have a great entusiat of FLOSS and open source word and this type of companies is a great notice

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 30, 2021, 10:01:10 pm
content: Quote from: martinribelotta on April 30, 2021, 09:24:48 pmLooks interesting but appearantly no VHDL and no SystemVerilog support

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 01, 2021, 12:13:12 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on April 30, 2021, 10:01:10 pmYeah...Note that SymbiFlow uses yosys as the synthesis tool, and wheras yosys still does support only Verilog, GHDL has added synthesis support lately and can act as a bridge:http://ghdl.github.io/ghdl/using/Synthesis.htmlhttps://github.com/ghdl/ghdl-yosys-pluginThis feature is still "experimental", and I haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting. Not sure I would trust this for any commercial project at this point of course, but it's worth noting.

author: tmadness
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 02, 2021, 10:52:20 pm
content: The big boy is of course the zynq. But the core is not a mcu, the development path is STEEP, the cost can be reasonable but most of the line is expensive. I am interested in knowing if there are any good mcu+fpga combos. The psoc 6 was disappointing, the psoc 5 is cool but underpowered.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2021, 07:37:41 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on April 30, 2021, 08:39:37 amI have just created a dev board for GW1NSR-4C:https://github.com/SushiBits/Gowinduino- that is a chip with Cortex-M3 hard core and 8MB built-in PSRAM. The problem is that the internal bus matrix of the Cortex-M3 is badly implemented IMO and I am not sure if it is fixable.And then there is this Hercules M7 chip:http://en.hercules-micro.com/content/details73_346.html- there is a version that has 192kB on-die SRAM + 8MB SiP DRAM + 2MB SiP QSPI NOR all in a QFN88 package. However AFAIK it won't be cheap. Hercules have some cheaper MCU+FPGA offerings but those are all 8051 based.Or if you can tolerate soft cores and you have a large enough FPGA, you can use an open source 8051 core, the free-for-FPGA Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 cores, a minimal RISC-V core, or a LatticeMico core (as both of which are now open source as well.)Quote from: tmadness on May 02, 2021, 10:52:20 pmEntry point Zynq parts like Zynq 7010 and 7020 has been cheaper than their CPU counterparts from NXP (i.MX6 line) for a while at least in China, so if you don't need that much FPGA resources and can tolerate the steep development path, a Zynq 7010/7020 based module may be a good option. (Those module usually have DDR SDRAM and PMIC integrated, so there would be few high speed signals and power domains outside of it.)

author: abyrvalg
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2021, 08:52:16 pm
content: A 6k LUT FPGA + 8051 MCU (found in Rigol power supplies):http://www.capital-micro.com/PDF/CME-M5_Family_FPGA_Data_Sheet_EN060418.pdf

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2021, 09:06:55 pm
content: Does "ZYNQ" fall into your definition of "low cost"?It's popular, so it's definitely cost effective for some applications.

author: olkipukki
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2021, 10:06:11 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on April 30, 2021, 09:52:34 amDid you consider soft-cores?LatticeMico8 (still around?) or LatticeMico32 are cheapest FPGAs you can find,very unlikely anything will fit Microblaze under your budget; not sure about Nios

author: langwadt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 04, 2021, 10:34:26 pm
content: Quote from: Doctorandus_P on May 04, 2021, 09:06:55 pmand for "to play with" you can get ~$15 boards on ebay et.al.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 05, 2021, 01:48:39 am
content: Speaking of Zynq, there are boards from dismantled Bitcoin miners that uses those. Maybe you can start with getting one of those used boards and wiping the programming and put in your own?

author: RolfNoot
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2021, 11:26:04 pm
content: I’ve worked with PSoC A LOT. Got started a long time ago I with 8-bitters 8051 and PIC16C54. Then switched to PSoC1 and it was a major relieve. The analog and digital fabric helped in vastly reducing component count on the boards while being able to do reconfiguration with firmware updates. Prices are good when buying directly from their distributors. With the launch of PSoC3 and 5, the analog switch cap blocks were abandoned (unfortunately). In return their digital fabric was much more sophisticated and configurable. Their new tool (PSoC Creator) brought a lot of digital blocks along (serial comms, counters, pwm, dma etc). It even supports creating your own components using the schematic editor or Verilog.Unfortunately PSoC6 has cut down on digital fabric and while Cypress/Infineon launched a new multi platform IDE, they stopped support for the digital blocks. The new tool (ModusToolbox) is not even able to configure it, while the old (windows only PSoC Creator) lacks on predefined components.All-in-all they succeeded well in rendering their great unique devices into mainstream MCUs, with a higher price-tag because of the almost unusable digital fabric).My concerns (as a devoted PSoC design partner) are echoed within Infineon, hoping they will value it’s uniqueness again.That said, I am not expecting any changes and by looking at their roadmap, they seem to going to abandon their UDBs (digital fabric).As looking for the next step I stumbled upon this topic and got interested in the Quicklogic EOS3. Prices are looking reasonable and I like the more less open source aspect of it. As ‘MCU guy’ I never really worked with FPGA but it always attracted me do work with it.I used 24 datapaths on PSoC5 to create 48 PWMs but I have no idea how this compares to a ‘true’ FPGA. Anyone?Regards,Rolf

author: jklasdf
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 31, 2021, 04:38:33 am
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 01, 2021, 12:13:12 amYosys does have support for many basic SystemVerilog constructs in newer versions.