Sipeed Tang Console – A GOWIN GW5AST/GW5AT board with 60K or 138K LUT for FPGA development and retro gaming

Sipeed Tang Console is an FPGA development based on GOWIN GW5AST SoC FPGA with 138K LUTs and a hard RISC-V core or GW5AT FPGA with 60K LUTs, designed as a generic FPGA development and retro gaming platform.

The Tange Console offers HDMI and RGB LCD display connectors, two USB ports for joystick or other peripherals, and plenty of expansion options with two 40-pin headers for SDRAM, GBA, and custom expansion, two PMOD connectors for joysticks or custom modules, and a 16-pin Raspberry Pi PCIe FFC connector. The “Tang Console” is also integrated into the “Tang Retro Console” as a complete gaming console kit with enclosure, joysticks, and accessories.

Sipeed Tang Console specifications:

• SoM(one or the other)
  • Sipeed Tang Mega 138K
    • SoC FPGA – GOWIN GW5AST-LV138FPG484A with
      • 138,240 LUT4
      • 1,080 Kb Shadow SRAM (SSRAM)
      • 6,120 Kb Block SRAM (BSRAM)
      • Number of BSRAM – 340
      • 298x DSP slices
      • 12x PLLs
      • 16x global clocks
      • 24x HCLK
      • 8x transceivers at 270Mbps to 12.5Gbps
      • Hard CPU – 32-bit RISC-V AE350_SOC @ 800 MHz
    • System Memory – 1GB 32-bit DDR3
    • Storage – 128 Mbit flash
  • Sipeed Tang Mega 60K
    • SoC – GOWIN GW5AT-LV60P484A
      • 59,904 LUT4
      • 468 Kb Shadow SRAM (SSRAM)
      • 2,124 Kb Block SRAM (BSRAM)
      • Number of BSRAM – 118
      • 8x PLLs
      • 16x global clocks
      • 20x HCLK
      • 4x transceivers at 270Mbps to 12.5Gbps
    • System Memory –  512MB 16-bit DDR3
    • Storage – 128 Mbit flash
• Storage – MicroSD card slot
• Display Interfaces
  • HDMI output
  • 40-pin RGB LCD connector compatible with 3.5-inch, 4.3-inch, 5-inch, etc… displays
• Audio – Speaker connector
• USB
  • 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports for Joystick or data peripheral connected to SerDes interfaces
  • 1x USB 2.0 Type-C on FPGA
  • 1x USB 2.0 Type-C for FPGA JTAG and UART through BL616 MCU
• Expansion
  • 2x 40-pin headers for SDRAM module, GBA slot module, or custom module
  • 16-pin Raspberry Pi PCIe FFC connector
  • 2x PMOD connector for JoyStick or custom expansion module
• Misc
  • 2x User keys, RECFG key to switch cores
  • Power and System LEDs
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB-C port
  • Battery connector
  •  Consumption – 5W for fanless design
• Dimensions – 65×56 mm

The Sipeed Tang Console boards support the following emulator cores: NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, MD, and Amiga. Sipeed is also working on PSX, NEOGEO, GBPC, and MSX support. You can download the emulator cores from the tangcore repository on GitHub. You’ll also find more hardware resources, documentation to get started with the GOWIN IDE (license required), links to example code, and various tutorials on the wiki.

Sipeed sells the Tang Console 60K/138K board on AliExpress for $69 and $99 respectively, and if you’d like a retro gaming kit instead, the company offers bundles with one or two joysticks, cables, microSD card, and DRAM expansion on the same page for $89 to $139. Additional information may be found on the product page, and if you are mostly interested in the retro gaming aspect of the kit, I’ve also embedded a two-hour live testing stream from “Pixel Cherry Ninja” below.

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