[HN Gopher] Build Your Own FPGA (2012)
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Build Your Own FPGA (2012)
Author : hinzundcode
Score : 138 points
Date : 2020-08-23 15:54 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.notdot.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.notdot.net)
| remexre wrote:
| Hm, this makes me wonder, are there any hand-assembled TTL
| computers that can send UDP packets on the internet? ChaCha20 is
| easy enough to implement and simple enough that you could
| probably do encrypted chat between two almost-definitely-not-
| backdoored computers if so.
|
| EDIT: though, I supposed you don't need your NIC to be trusted
| any more than your ISP's router, so an esp8266 might be
| sufficient.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| http://www.homebrewcpu.com/
|
| A computer built from 74-series logic running Minix (with a
| full tcp/ip stack). Once upon a time you could telnet into it.
| osamagirl69 wrote:
| I love the idea of this! It reminds me of the megaprocessor
| project[1] but much more accessible in its scale, and way easier
| to understand.
|
| The writeup is very clear, and the boards themselves are very
| easy to follow in operation. The more I think about it, the more
| I feel the need for a wall sized array of them acting as a clock.
| Maybe with a flipdot display for the time? The main issue I see
| is that the busses are pretty narrow and the there isn't a
| dedicated crossbar for the routing so the placement is going to
| be really challenging and probably involve a lot of 'inactive'
| modules that are just acting as a passthrough for the wiring.
|
| [1]http://megaprocessor.com/
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps someone can design an FPGA and have it fabbed by Google
| for free! See: [1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755693
| kazinator wrote:
| The circuit board modules that make up the cells of the FPGA are
| reminiscent of PLC's.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_logic_controller
| tyingq wrote:
| Don't miss the gem in the comments...someone answers this
| question there:
|
| _" Hi. Is possible use this like a "industrial" fpga? For
| example, for minning bitcoin? Because the fpga is very expensive
| here in Brazil, and the 7400 is cheap. "_
| progre wrote:
| Top comment on the post (from 2012) is by Lee_Felsenstein [1]
| of Homebrew Computer Club fame and designer of the Osborne 1,
| the first successfull portable computer (Lee had no part on
| tanking the company though, Osborne did that all by himself).
| Quite awesome to have such legents comment on your project.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Felsenstein
| dang wrote:
| If curious see also
|
| 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14643474
|
| Discussed at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4726724
| dfox wrote:
| The form factor kinda reminds me of mostly misguided project I
| toyed with in early 00's. The idea was to get useful amount of
| computing power for massively parallel applications on shoestring
| budget by building 2D network of boards in this form factor that
| either contained "8051 on steroids" MCU or small-ish Altera CPLD.
| remexre wrote:
| Have you seen the GA144?
| pkaye wrote:
| Tilera was doing this but it never caught on. Probably just
| hard to build applications that fully utilize its capabilities.
|
| And Green Arrays did the same on the lower end but with forth
| language processors.
| rectang wrote:
| This is a blog post from 2012, which should be noted in the title
| of the HN discussion by appending "[2012]".
| dang wrote:
| Added. Thanks!
| tripletao wrote:
| I like this. Real FPGAs use the same realization of an n-input
| LUT as a 2^n bit shift register plus a mux, which is why e.g.
| Xilinx lets you have an SRL16 for the same cost as a LUT4--the
| shift register is primarily intended to hold the LUT
| configuration bitstream, but you can repurpose it as user logic.
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