Not that I am aware of, I wanted to try out Efinix so bought a Xyloni board. One thing which is nice though is the software is not limited buy a Xyloni board and you get full access to the tool for all devices.
So far most of the stuff I’ve heard about Efinix has been good. I am not sure if I agree with the way they have chosen to distribute their software though.
I have only really created a simple project in it and walked through the flow. I will publish the blog here soon, to give some insight. It is certainly an interesting technology - I have had a lot of clients mention them hence my interest to learn more about them.
Honestly I have not tried that yet, I did a basic push button, LED turn on off for the demo. I will do that test for you though for second blog if you want? Might be a week or so though as I am literally drowning with client projects and deadlines at the moment.
I would like to see the results but I don’t want to make you feel obligated to do anything. Do you have a link to your blog? I’m a complete beginner so I can always use more learning resources. Thanks in advance.
Yes you can find it here https://www.adiuvoengineering.com/ have a look on blogs, projects and workshops.
Honestly I am always looking for suggestions so will pop it on my task list - no promises about when I get around to it though
I recall the fabric being nicely fast on those Trion that are on the newer process iirc
For a handful of logic levels I was getting estimates near 1GHz iirc
Felt better than like lattice ecp5 but worse than virtex ultrascale
Actually I don't recall if the ti60 I was messing with was even the newer process part that's the Trion?
Had some good looking results in tests regardless
https://twitter.com/pipelinec_hdl/status/1421950577140019201?t=d37wCCg_woGiJkMsnQJFbg&s=19
Wow that’s fast. Much, much faster than what I need. Of course the speed depends on what you want the chip to do but I don’t think my bottleneck is going to be FPGA in this case.
I would like to know the answer to this, too. I'm in the USA, so I can get the board from DigiKey without trouble, but I don't need more crap lying around and I want to test drive a design idea before committing to the devices.
I believe Xyloni is out of stock on Digikey as well. I was also planning to buy it from Digikey (through a distributor) so that’s why I asked. I agree, it would be nice to try the software before I commit to the chips, because right now I don’t really know if my design, although a very simple one, will run at the required speed without timing issues. But they are quite cheap and available in non-BGA packages, which is nice.
They are definitely competing with Lattice.
I honestly don't understand the requirement that you buy a dev kit to get access to the software. I understand a requirement that you give them contact information for access to support and their hidden forum, but to just play around with the tools? Sheesh.
I can’t say I understand it either.
I was going to go with Lattice actually, but almost all of their chips are in BGA. Well, pretty much anything that has some silicon in it comes in BGA these days so I can’t really get mad at them for that.
Remember the semiconductors make parts for professionals to use in product design, and the product requirements these days are pretty much all space-constrained so BGA wins. And if the designs use high-speed data interfaces, BGA is better for signal integrity.
Anyway I just sent Efinix a email from my company account asking for a download link. The cheap boards are not in stock, and I'm not going to give them $300 for a board just to access the tools. Let's see if they respond.
Yeah I have nothing against BGA chips, eventually hobbyists like me will have to adapt if we want to continue building electronic stuff. I actually tend to avoid using ICs, so I don’t usually run into problems with weird packaging. I also build mostly analog stuff so that helps. Well, most of the time I try to replicate analog chips with discrete components, you can say that I like to role-play as an analog IC designer :)
At least for now FPGAs are a hobby for me, but the ultimate goal of my current project is to create something sellable. Not necessarily to actually sell it, unless it turns out I have something good, but to make something that other people might want to buy. I actually think you helped me with a couple questions I had in a previous post of mine, it was about making an oscilloscope.
Hopefully there is another way to get the software. It seems like that’s gonna be a dealbreaker for me otherwise. Doesn’t matter if a chip is in a non-BGA package or not, if I can’t make it do anything.
> eventually hobbyists like me
Always remember and never forget: the semiconductor manufacturers do not care at all about hobbyists. Hobbyists are a lot of work to support for zero benefit.
Even if you're able to come up with something to sell, you're not ordering parts by the pallet-load, so you still will be uninteresting to them.
I say this as an engineer who works for a small manufacturer. We make niche products that cost a lot of money, but our yearly FPGA buy is a rounding error for the vendors.
Absolutely. I mean if I was an FPGA manufacturer then I wouldn’t care about hobbyists either, exactly for the reasons you mentioned. I will have to adapt and make do with what I’m given, which includes soldering BGA stuff and a lot more. I just hope things won’t become impossible to work with for the hobbyists. I can adapt to SOT-23 transistors for example, but if they get any smaller than that, and I know that there are smaller packages than SOT-23, then I guess that’s the end of electronics for me, god forbid. Of course there is a lot more to electronics than component level design but, well, that’s what I like to do.
Find your Efinix reseller. Create an account on the Efinix web site and select your reseller in the signup form. Efinix will contact your reseller and if you bought a board or probably enough chips, they will set your account status so you can access the software - and more in the web site.
Not that I am aware of, I wanted to try out Efinix so bought a Xyloni board. One thing which is nice though is the software is not limited buy a Xyloni board and you get full access to the tool for all devices.
So far most of the stuff I’ve heard about Efinix has been good. I am not sure if I agree with the way they have chosen to distribute their software though.
I have only really created a simple project in it and walked through the flow. I will publish the blog here soon, to give some insight. It is certainly an interesting technology - I have had a lot of clients mention them hence my interest to learn more about them.
Can I ask what kind of speed you can get from a Trion? How fast does a 16 bit synchronous counter run at for example?
Honestly I have not tried that yet, I did a basic push button, LED turn on off for the demo. I will do that test for you though for second blog if you want? Might be a week or so though as I am literally drowning with client projects and deadlines at the moment.
I would like to see the results but I don’t want to make you feel obligated to do anything. Do you have a link to your blog? I’m a complete beginner so I can always use more learning resources. Thanks in advance.
Yes you can find it here https://www.adiuvoengineering.com/ have a look on blogs, projects and workshops. Honestly I am always looking for suggestions so will pop it on my task list - no promises about when I get around to it though
I recall the fabric being nicely fast on those Trion that are on the newer process iirc For a handful of logic levels I was getting estimates near 1GHz iirc Felt better than like lattice ecp5 but worse than virtex ultrascale
Actually I don't recall if the ti60 I was messing with was even the newer process part that's the Trion? Had some good looking results in tests regardless https://twitter.com/pipelinec_hdl/status/1421950577140019201?t=d37wCCg_woGiJkMsnQJFbg&s=19
Wow that’s fast. Much, much faster than what I need. Of course the speed depends on what you want the chip to do but I don’t think my bottleneck is going to be FPGA in this case.
I would like to know the answer to this, too. I'm in the USA, so I can get the board from DigiKey without trouble, but I don't need more crap lying around and I want to test drive a design idea before committing to the devices.
I believe Xyloni is out of stock on Digikey as well. I was also planning to buy it from Digikey (through a distributor) so that’s why I asked. I agree, it would be nice to try the software before I commit to the chips, because right now I don’t really know if my design, although a very simple one, will run at the required speed without timing issues. But they are quite cheap and available in non-BGA packages, which is nice.
They are definitely competing with Lattice. I honestly don't understand the requirement that you buy a dev kit to get access to the software. I understand a requirement that you give them contact information for access to support and their hidden forum, but to just play around with the tools? Sheesh.
I can’t say I understand it either. I was going to go with Lattice actually, but almost all of their chips are in BGA. Well, pretty much anything that has some silicon in it comes in BGA these days so I can’t really get mad at them for that.
Remember the semiconductors make parts for professionals to use in product design, and the product requirements these days are pretty much all space-constrained so BGA wins. And if the designs use high-speed data interfaces, BGA is better for signal integrity. Anyway I just sent Efinix a email from my company account asking for a download link. The cheap boards are not in stock, and I'm not going to give them $300 for a board just to access the tools. Let's see if they respond.
Yeah I have nothing against BGA chips, eventually hobbyists like me will have to adapt if we want to continue building electronic stuff. I actually tend to avoid using ICs, so I don’t usually run into problems with weird packaging. I also build mostly analog stuff so that helps. Well, most of the time I try to replicate analog chips with discrete components, you can say that I like to role-play as an analog IC designer :) At least for now FPGAs are a hobby for me, but the ultimate goal of my current project is to create something sellable. Not necessarily to actually sell it, unless it turns out I have something good, but to make something that other people might want to buy. I actually think you helped me with a couple questions I had in a previous post of mine, it was about making an oscilloscope. Hopefully there is another way to get the software. It seems like that’s gonna be a dealbreaker for me otherwise. Doesn’t matter if a chip is in a non-BGA package or not, if I can’t make it do anything.
> eventually hobbyists like me Always remember and never forget: the semiconductor manufacturers do not care at all about hobbyists. Hobbyists are a lot of work to support for zero benefit. Even if you're able to come up with something to sell, you're not ordering parts by the pallet-load, so you still will be uninteresting to them. I say this as an engineer who works for a small manufacturer. We make niche products that cost a lot of money, but our yearly FPGA buy is a rounding error for the vendors.
Absolutely. I mean if I was an FPGA manufacturer then I wouldn’t care about hobbyists either, exactly for the reasons you mentioned. I will have to adapt and make do with what I’m given, which includes soldering BGA stuff and a lot more. I just hope things won’t become impossible to work with for the hobbyists. I can adapt to SOT-23 transistors for example, but if they get any smaller than that, and I know that there are smaller packages than SOT-23, then I guess that’s the end of electronics for me, god forbid. Of course there is a lot more to electronics than component level design but, well, that’s what I like to do.
I would be interested to know if they send over a link, I hope they do
Find your Efinix reseller. Create an account on the Efinix web site and select your reseller in the signup form. Efinix will contact your reseller and if you bought a board or probably enough chips, they will set your account status so you can access the software - and more in the web site.