Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gluggymug 3359 days ago
Cool project.

As someone from the FPGA industry, bigger projects just use your CASE 3 on a board to start prototyping. A Zedboard or similar. Cheaper version could be the Zybo. It's like $500 vs $200.

When you get to production stage, you whip up your own board.

What exactly is your complaint about the propriety tools? You are using Altera tools with the DE0 Nano.

1 comments

Thanks

k. Interesting. A former employer of mine used CASE 4. The FPGA was connected to the CPU via a memory interface. In general this option should be more flexible. You can choose the exact processor and FPGA type you want. On the other hand CASE 3 may has components which are optimized for each other. But for an industry product I would feel to be in a better position in CASE 4 if one of the components is discontinued.

About the complaint. It was a bit too emotional, because I had some specific issues in mind, that cost me a couple of forum searches and hours. Included GUI bugs, some none-intuitive settings and IP blackboxes that weren't working or buggy. Not only Altera but also Lattice. The Lattice FPGA contained a Hard-IP SPI. Didn't do anything. I posted on the forums, a couple of users replied who had the same problem but no reaction from Lattice at all.

I think CASE 3 is going to be much faster due to the high performance AXI ports that Zynq's have.
Yes. That's true