An Interview with Luke Valenty

From The Amp Hour Electronics Podcast The Amp Hour (Chris Gammell and David L Jones)

Luke just got back from Maker Faire Bay Area
- 0h 0m 48s
Arduino FPGA board
- 0h 1m 4s
Want lots of serial ports
- 0h 2m 59s
Porting sketches from one micro to another
- 0h 6m 30s
FPGAwars
- 0h 9m 41s
Remake of Pong
- 0h 10m 35s
Need tools for things to be simpler
- 0h 11m 22s
Tim Mithro Ansell
- 0h 11m 43s
Clifford Wolf who started project ICEstorm
- 0h 11m 51s
FPGAwars hashtag
- 0h 13m 0s
APio for building FPGAs
- 0h 13m 13s
Obijuan Academy
- 0h 13m 54s
Learning Verilog
- 0h 14m 44s
Data pipeline vs State machines and control
- 0h 16m 24s
Similar to an "if" statement on a micro
- 0h 16m 51s
Faster to write imperative code
- 0h 17m 14s
Serial port example
- 0h 18m 3s
Low power FPGA collects data, wakes up the micro and then transmits
- 0h 19m 24s
"You're not writing code any more, you're describing hardware"
- 0h 22m 6s
Wants to be able to take code and then sythesis in logic
- 0h 23m 43s
Why is FPGA needed in a world of cheap micros
- 0h 26m 58s
Amazing $1 microcontroller
- 0h 27m 27s
When should people switch to an FPGA
- Customized peripherals
- Being sure of the hardware that's going into micr
- FGPAs have room for change in the future (Especially if you think the protocol will change in the future)
- 0h 29m 54s
Chris has experienced this with a video recorder that sells digital upgrades.
- 0h 33m 1s
Also useful in test jigs to emulate hardware
- 0h 33m 6s
Explaining the hardware
- 0h 35m 40s
A series is 1.2x0.7
- 0h 36m 32s
Same size as Teensy
- 0h 36m 59s
Doesn't have the end pins like the Teensy
- 0h 39m 0s
Buy the boards on Tindie
- 0h 39m 44s
Difference between a and b series
- 0h 40m 57s
Bugblat tif
- 0h 41m 7s
Learned surface mount soldering
- 0h 44m 11s
Can find purchaseable boards and more on TinyFPGA.com
- 0h 45m 54s
Lattice Mach XO2
CPLD replacement
- 0h 46m 31s
No DSP blocks
- 0h 46m 39s
Might be able to fit a micro in A2
- 0h 47m 23s
A2 has a hard SPI block
- 0h 47m 52s
Put store up on tindie for A1
- 0h 48m 58s
Digilent clint cole
- 0h 49m 35s
Having a board on the shelf could help for projects/hackathons/when in a bind
- 0h 51m 22s
There used to be a B2
- 0h 52m 50s
USB connector is SMT
- 0h 53m 57s
BX board is 4 layer with BGA ICE40 81 ball 0.4 pitch
- 0h 54m 49s
Package is meant to be used in a high density interconnect
- 0h 55m 41s
B2 pins are mostly IO
- 0h 56m 34s
Leaves some pins tri-stated and breaks out the deep hard IP blocks
- 0h 57m 22s
Using PCBway with 4/4 process, via is 0.2 mm
- 0h 59m 49s
Wanted more IO for the Bx boards
- 1h 1m 16s
Squished pads narrower and elongated them
- 1h 1m 26s
Everything is on github
- 1h 1m 53s
Choose your side t-shirt
- 1h 3m 23s
Re-using pins like the SPI flash
- 1h 5m 4s
Once config is complete, the SPI is handed over to the user design
- 1h 6m 12s
Recommends moving to a larger package
- 1h 7m 30s
Decided not to do castellation
- 1h 9m 12s
B series guide
- 1h 9m 54s
BX has a different pin constraint file
- 1h 10m 46s
Recommends using APio on commandline
- 1h 11m 9s
IDE using Atom with APio plugin
- 1h 11m 18s
Using IceCube2 toolchain
- 1h 12m 4s
APio supports mostly pin constraints
- 1h 15m 17s
Symbiflow is the next gen of opensource tools
- 1h 16m 0s
FPGA_dave
- 1h 16m 56s
ECP5 will be the next FPGA
- 1h 17m 32s
Wants to use SERDES
- 1h 17m 47s
Targeting crowdfunding campaign in fall
- 1h 20m 1s
Currently have to preorder the BX, due in July
- 1h 20m 13s
B series has an USB in the FPGA fabric
- 1h 22m 20s
Gets enumerated as a serial port
- 1h 23m 6s
Users can pull in the USB device to their projects
- 1h 25m 0s
Can store metadata in the spi flash that talks to the programmer
- 1h 25m 38s
Like a map file + UID
- 1h 26m 1s
Dave Vandenbout XESS
- 1h 27m 35s
Professor in Egypt doing FPGA online compiler
- 1h 29m 36s
SDR radio people
- 1h 31m 6s
Hackaday Supercoference
- 1h 33m 14s
Ordered 1250 boards, 600 ordered
- 1h 36m 14s
TinyFPGA on Twitter, GitHub, Tindie. Luke is on Hackaday as lukevalenty
- 1h 36m 30s