Collaborate Disseminate
The best thing about field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), when you have a massively parallel application, is that everything runs in parallel. The worst thing about FPGAs, when you need a lot of stuff to happen in sequence, is that everything runs in parallel. If you have a multi-step computation, for …read more
Everyone who builds embedded systems wants tools to help build and debug systems faster, so it isn’t uncommon to see boards outfitted with various tools like serial port sniffers. We’ve seen a few incarnations and the latest is Glasgow. The small board uses an FPGA and claims to do the …read more
Continue reading Glasgow Uses an FPGA as an Embedded Systems Multitool
Monty Python once did a sketch where people tried to summarize Proust in fifteen seconds. Although summarizing eight FPGA-based CPUs is almost as daunting, [jaeblog] does a nice job of giving a quick sketch of how the CPUs work with the Xilinx Vivado toolchain and the Digilent Arty board.
The …read more
Reverse engineering or modifying a device often requires you to access the firmware stored on a microcontroller. Since companies are usually not fond of people who try to peek into their proprietary data, most commercial devices are readout protected. [rumpeltux] ran into this problem when he tried to dump the …read more
Continue reading The Cheap Way to Glitch an STM8 Microcontroller
You might have caught Maya Posch’s article about the first open-source ASIC tools from Google and SkyWater Technology. It envisions increased access to make custom chips — Application Specific Integrated Circuits — designed using open-source tools, and made real through existing chip fabrication facilities. My first thought? How much does …read more
Continue reading Your Own Open Source ASIC: SkyWater-PDF Plans First 130 nm Wafer in 2020
If you want to use a display or camera with an FPGA, you will often end up with a MIPI-based solution. As of the Xilinx Vivado 2020.1 release, the MIPI DSI (display serial interface) and CSI (camera serial interface) IP blocks are now bundled with the IDE to be used …read more
Continue reading Xilinx Makes MIPI CSI and DSI Controller IP Blocks Free To Use With Vivado
Yesterday we reported that Lattice Semiconductor had inserted a clause that restricted the reverse engineering of bitstreams produced by their FPGA toolchains. Although not explicitly stated, it’s assumed that this was directed toward several projects over the past five years that have created fully open source toolchains by reverse engineering …read more
Continue reading Lattice Drops EULA Clause Forbidding FPGA Bitstream Reverse Engineering
The topic of reverse engineering is highly contentious at best when it comes to software and hardware development. Ever since the configuration protocol (bitstream) for Lattice Semiconductor’s iCE40 FPGAs was published in 2015 through reverse engineering efforts, there has been a silent war between proponents of open bitstream protocols and …read more
With some clever hacks and fast IO work, it’s possible to get your average garden-variety microcontroller to output some form of video. Old analog standards like composite and VGA are just slow enough that it’s possible to bitbash one’s way to success. If you’re serious about video work, however, you’ll …read more
Continue reading An Open Source HDMI Implementation for FPGAs
For most people, adding WiFi to a project means grabbing something like an ESP8266 or an ESP32. But if you are developing your own design on an FPGA, that means adding another package. If you are targeting Linux, the OpenWifi project has a good start at providing WiFi in Verilog. …read more