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Software/Hardware FPGA Dev Board that runs Linux

Posted by Hemos on from the bringing-it-together dept.

bforsse writes "The ML300 allows engineers to develop hardware with HDL synthesis/simulation and software with standard GNU tools. The entire system is implemented inside one FPGA with an integrated IBM PPC processor. The board comes with all the peripherals that a standard motherboard or laptop has and then some. It currently ships with MontaVista Linux, a number of other linux flavors and OSs are in the pipeline. Maybe this new merging of the hardware and software worlds will settle some of the religious wars between hw and sw engineers?...ok, maybe not."

13 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. What can you do with it. by jericho4.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Ok. I have a vauge idea what a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) is. I understand that this is a device that can be programmed on the chip level. But I still don't understand what this is, really.

    Can someone with a bit of know-how point us towards some more info?

    --
    "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
  2. VHDL by Amon+Re · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Does linux even have any good VHDL simulators?

  3. Re:funny... by WhaDaYaKnow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...the term 'engineer' is used very loosely when you are refering to software engineers...

    Well that's what hardware engineers think when the software engineer disagrees to install MS-DOS 3.3 to test the hardware. ;-)

    Seriously though, I've been through two board bringups, both Intel Architecture.

    The first board was considered 'done' by the hardware guys, after it booted DOS. I told them that that was not really a test, and sure enough months (and numerous patch wires) later we finally were able to use _all_ the features on the board and boot Linux and Win95.

    On the second board I was most impressed with the software tools hardware guys used. NOT! Although the board was more or less up and running I found a couple of places where transmits were connected to transmits and receives to receives. I asked why the schematic capture tools didn't catch such obvious mistakes. I know the software can, but quite honestly, all the software used for hardware design feels like it was written by, uh, hardware guys. :-O

    Seriously though, the software tools that hardware engineers use leave a lot to be desired (I mean, the last board I worked on was in 2002 and they used a DOS based program to do the layout for peet's sake)

    In defense of the hardware engineer though, he'd use symbols provided by the manufacturer and they, for some reason, could not be bothered to indicated the type of signal a pin has properly (e.g. input, output, bidir, etc..)

    Until today I never understand why they'd risk the change of having to do a new rev of a board vs the cost of spending a few minutes to create the symbols properly.

    Then again, I've seen software 'engineers' do the same stupid stuff. ;-)

  4. Re:Yeah, sure. by baywulf · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you want a cheaper FPGA board, then try out the following company. They have some decent boards for under $100 though no microprocessor is included.

    http://www.digilentinc.com/

  5. Hardware/Software convergence - the real thing by kinnell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The xilinx parts are for embedded systems, and have no real benefits for your average PC user (hence they can market them them for $$$).

    Look here for genuinely cool FPGA technology. They use transputer based technology to implement parallel algorithms in, well, parallel. The demos are very impressive - real time raytracing @50MHz anyone?

    --
    If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
    1. Re:Hardware/Software convergence - the real thing by Memetic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Celoxica's main product is a development environment that basically lets you write C code and drop it onto an FPGA. (Yes it runs on Linux.)

      Its a lot faster to develop this way than more traditional methods (HDL's) as its so easy to iterate, for example being able to drag code back and forth to optimise the flow between a processor on your board and an FPGA being used as a custom parallell coprocessor is pretty cool.

      As for the demos, that ray trace one is pretty cool, but I did like the space invaders demo - I think the game code was from a ROM dump - you even got an insert coin prompt!

  6. Re:System Requirements by girmann · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hmm... I beg to differ.

    Pehaps you have heard of a VHDL simulator called Modelsim? They have a Linux version and they have found that through test after test Modelsim runs much faster on Linux than on any other platform. That's why they are targeting Linux.

    --
    Nietzsche is dead. --God
  7. LEON by girmann · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Nobody here has mentioned the LOEN progect, which is based on the SPARC V8. This is an open processor core that you can put into any FPGA. Speeds aren't as great as the PowerPC in this desing, but hey, it works!

    --
    Nietzsche is dead. --God
  8. Correct Link by fredistheking · · Score: 2, Interesting

    here

  9. Re:FPGA tools and Linux (was: Re:GNU tools?) by imadork · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Synplicity doesn't do fitting and layout, just synthesis. I am using Altera FPGA's in my current project, and am currently using Synplicity and Quartus (Altera's design software) under Linux with absolutely no problems. It beats the pants off of our Solaris compute servers, which while they're older, cost 5x as much for half the performance. This is getting IT people turned on about Linux, and I'm hoping my next desktop will be Linux-based instead of NT (but I'm not holding my breath).

    As far as I know, Xilinx doesn't have a direct Linux port of their software, but say that their Windows Binaries will run under WINE. I don't know, as I haven't used Xilinx stuff in some time.

  10. Re:Yeah, sure. by Asprin · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Dude, I'm not sure who she is, but is there a reason why her web page has a Slashdot banner on her links page?

    --
    "Lawyers are for sucks."
    - Doug McKenzie
  11. Linux by 56ksucks · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This just in, My car runs linux, my phone runs linux, my shoes run linux, my dishwasher runs linux, my cat runs linux, when I fart, my fart runs linux, and CowboyNeal runs linux! My point? Why is it news worthy every time something new with a microprocessor runs linux?

    --

    ---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"

  12. Re:$4695 is really expensive for an FPGA by Bassman59 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    heroine: "Doing stuff in hardware is neat because it runs real fast, you're interacting with the real world instead of living in a black box, and you can charge money for it. Other than that, it's too expensive to use in most commercial situations and you need to go back to a general purpose computer. Let's put it this way. The ML300 is $4695 in materials. A standalone FPGA with supporting electronics and PCB fabrication is $100 in materials. Pure software on a general purpose computer is $0 in materials."

    The board is expensive because tech support for something like this is expensive. By charging a non-trivial amount of money, the vendor is able to weed out the non-serious players.