Low-cost FPGA add-on boards for existing microcontroller platforms
Nicklaus T
TBD
The recent explosion of hobbyist-accessible educational hardware has not touched all fields of electronics equally. The fields of FPGA and ASIC design are currently limited by the cost of development kits, which tend to cost dozens or hundreds of dollars. Microcontroller and microprocessor boards, on the other hand, can easily be found below $100 and can even be found below $5 at reasonable spec levels. Many tinkerers begin their journeys with microcontrollers for this reason, and later branch out by interfacing new types of electronics with the development hardware they already own. Adding FPGA functionality to existing microcontroller platforms through the use of add-on boards significantly decreases the cost of entry to studying the field of digital integrated circuits.
Hardware Mockups
As of April, the boards are in the early stages of development. The pinouts and support component selections are a work in progress, and the microcontroller boards that this project is intended to complement are being used to test a custom iCE40LP384 breakout. The status of the boards can be found in this GitHub repository.
About the Demo Table Host
Nicklaus Thompson is a recent electrical engineering graduate from the University of Washington and a frequent volunteer at IEEE events. He has submitted designs to Tiny Tapeout and currently works as an RTL Engineer in Seattle, Washington.