[eyegor]

I love playing with fpgas, but the compile time and size limitations are always horrendous or simply not tenable for most applications. This library narrows that down to be even worse [0]. On most of alteras chips you'd be hard pressed to fit a few of their own filter libraries, let alone your own code. Honestly I'm not sure what you would use a tool like this for. If you want asic development, you will likely need to use an hdl for better synthesis. If you want dot net languages, you are going to want a regular cpu.

Can someone tell me what this would actually be used for? I'm sitting here scratching my head.

[0] > Currently only the Nexys 4 DDR board (which is NOT the same as the non-DDR Nexys 4, be sure to purchase the linked board!) is supported, so you'll need to purchase one. Note that this is a relatively low-end development board that can't fit huge algorithms and it only supports slow communication channels. So with this board Hastlayer is only suitable for simpler algorithms that only need to exchange small amount of data.

[zoltanlehoczky]

The approach here is to use FPGAs as compute accelerators, much like GPGPUs, and in somewhat similar use-cases. I.e. if you have an embarrassingly parallel compute-bound algorithm then it might make sense to offload it to FPGAs to gain performance and power efficiency.

Keep in mind that the target audience is not hardware engineers but .NET software developers. If you know what Altera libraries are then you're not the target audience :).

[zoltanlehoczky]

And regarding Nexys: now we actually support Microsoft Catapult FPGAs as well and working on others too. It's quite challenging to add support for each of them, since as I'm sure you're aware, HLD is nowhere near as portable, especially between manufacturers, than software. Also, while if you know an HDL like VHDL then you can write code for all FPGAs, but keep in mind that you also have to write code compatible with each FPGA specifically (with major differences being at least between product families). With a high-level approach like Hastlayer, you get multi-FPGA support for free, i.e. your code won't change. It narrows your options hardware-wise but it's much simpler. It's a question of trade-offs and depends on what is most suitable for you.

Regarding size limitations: check out the samples on what you can fit on a low-end FPGA with Hastlayer, it's not that small. FPGAs that are more suitable as actual compute accelerators have 5-10x the logic resources (and much more) than the Nexys in question.

[vmchale]

> in somewhat similar use-cases. I.e. if you have an embarrassingly parallel compute-bound algorithm then it might make sense to offload it to FPGAs to gain performance and power efficiency.

Also concurrency! GPU is SIMD; FPGA need not be.

[zoltanlehoczky]

Yes, FPGA "threads" much like CPU threads can contain complex logic, and different from each other.

[aswanson]

Hardware like fpgas peaked in the 90s as a value proposition. The future is algorithmic and abstract from hardware.

[aswanson]

Overpriced defense contracts. Other than that, nothing.