Adiuvo Engineering’s Forgix is a development board pairing a Raspberry Pi RP2354 microcontroller with 2MB flash and an Efinix Trion T8 FPGA in the Teensy 4.0 form factor.
The board also features a 16 Mbit PSRAM chip, a USB-C port, a push-button, an RGB LED, and through and castellated holes routed to either the RP2354 MCU or Trion T8 FPGA for SPI, I2C, UART, ADC, USB 1.1, and custom interfaces.
Forgix board specifications:
- SoC – Raspberry Pi RP2354B
- CPU
- Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 @ 150 MHz with Arm Trustzone, Secure boot
- Dual-core 32-bit RISC-V Hazard3 @ 150 MHz (3-stage in-order pipeline; RV32IMAC with Zba, Zbb, Zbs, Zbkb, Zcb, Zcmp, and Zicsr extensions)
- Up to two cores can be used at a time, either 2x Arm, 2x RISC-V, or 1x Arm + 1x RISC-V
- Memory – 520 KB on-chip SRAM
- Storage – 2MB of stacked (in-package) flash memory
- CPU
- FPGA – Efinix Trion T8F49 connected to RP2354 over SPI
- 7,384 Logic Elements
- 8x embedded multipliers
- 122.88 kbit internal RAM
- 4x global clocks from GPIO pins
- 1x low-power oscillator
- 1x PLL
- Package – BGA-49 (3×3 mm)
- Memory – 16 Mbit QSPI PSRAM (APS1604M)
- USB – 1x USB Type-C port for power and programming
- Through and castellated holes following the Teensy 4.0 form factor (but not the same layout)
- Pins 0–1, 2–3, 7–8 connected to Raspberry Pi RP2354 for UART and GPIOs
- Other pins routed directly to Trion T8 FPGA I/Os for custom logic
- Refer to the article on Control Paths for the detailed layout.
- Debugging – Tag-Connect TC2030 SWD
- Misc
- Push button
- RGB LED
- External oscillator (ECS-2520MV)
- Power Supply
- 5V DC input via USB-C port
- 3.3V for I/Os, 1.1V for FPGA core
- Dimensions – 36 x 18 mm (Teensy 4.0-compatible footprint)
The company released the KiCad hardware design files, PDF schematics, C firmware for the RP2354, Python code for the Bitstream loader running on a host, and a Plasma LED RTL project for the Efinity GUI on Bitbucket. Documentation is lacking, so I’d recommend reading the article by Control Paths linked in the specifications for instructions to get started.
The Forgix board is rather unique, so there’s no direct competitor. We did write about the Clintech Pico RP2354B board and FireAnt Efinix Trion T8 FPGA development board previously, but some of the closest alternatives are probably MCU + FPGA designs, such as the Shrike-lite (Renesas ForgeFPGA + RP2040) and even more so the Pico-Ice (Lattice ICE40 UltraPlus 5K FPGA + RP2040) board.
Adiuvo Engineering is taking orders for the Forgix board for $50 plus shipping and taxes.
Via EEJournal
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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