Sipeed Tang Primer 25K board features 23,040 Logic Cells for FPGA prototyping and development

Sipeed Tang Primer 25K Features 23,040 Logic Cells for Efficient FPGA Prototyping and Development

Sipeed has recently introduced the Tang Primer 25K, an FPGA board powered by Gowin Semi GW5A-LV25MG121 chip. This board features 23,040 LUTs, USB Host capability, and an optional SDRAM module that unlocks vintage gaming. We have previously covered many FPGA boards like Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro, Fudan Micro JFM7K325T, ILYGO T-FPGA, and many other development boards by Sipeed including the Sipeed Tang Nano 20K with a Gowin GW2A FPGA. You can check those out if interested. The Tang Primer 25K development board is divided into the 25K SoM Board and the 25K Dock Board together they offer a comprehensive set of features: GW5A-LV25MG121 specifications: 23040 LUT4 23040 Registers (FF) 28x 18×18 Multipliers 6x PLLs Memory/Storage: 64Mbit NOR Flash 180K Distributed S-SRAM 1008K B-SRAM (bits) 56 Number of B-SRAM I/O Interfaces: 3x PMOD 40-pin header 2x buttons 8x I/O banks 75x General IO MIPI IO – 4lane Data USB Ports: […]

2023 Year in review – Top 10 posts, statistics, and what to expect in 2024

CNX Software Happy New Year 2024

It’s the last day and last article of the year, so we will look at some highlights of 2023, some traffic statistics on the CNX Software website, and speculate what interesting developments may happen in 2024. Looking back at 2023 The semiconductor shortage that had happened since 2020 started to fade away in early 2023, and supplies for most electronics components and devices seem to be adequate at this time, so that was a bright spot this year, and hopefully, it will stay that way in 2024 despite geopolitical tensions. We did not have any super exciting new Arm application processors from Rockchip, Amlogic, or Allwinner announced this year, although the Amlogic S928X penta-core Cortex-A76/A55 CPU started to show up in some 8K TV boxes. The launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC with a Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 processor was probably the main highlight for Arm on this side […]

International Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 deals and coupon codes

Alixexpress Black Friday 2023

We’ve been writing about international Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and coupon codes since 2014, as US-centric promotions such as Amazon’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals are not always available to the international audience of CNX Software. So once again, we’ve searched at Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023 international promotions and discount codes from specific manufacturers as well as popular online stores such as Aliexpress, Banggood, and others. Aliexpress Black Friday and Cyber Monday event Aliexpress will have a Black Friday (and Cyber Monday) event in 2023, but we have limited details at this time since it will only start on November 23, contrary to some of the other deals we’ll feature below which are already up and running. But the event will have two periods: Nov 20-22 PT – Warm Up event where users can find and add items to the cart before purchasing during the […]

Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock features GOWIN GW5AST FPGA + RISC-V SoC

Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock

Sipeed has launched another FPGA board part of their Tang family with the Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock powered by a GOWIN GW5AST SoC with 138K logic elements as well as an 800 MHz AE350_SOC RISC-V hardcore unit, and featuring a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, DVI Rx and Tx, two SFP+ cages, a Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 port, and more. We’ve previously seen companies like AMD (Xilinx) and Microchip produce FPGA SoCs with hard cores such as the Zynq Ultrascale+ family (4x Cortex-A53) or the PolarFire MPSoC (4x 64-bit SiFive U54 RISC-V cores), but it’s the first time I see GOWIN introduce an FPGA + RISC-V SoC, as all the previous parts that came to my attention were FPGA devices. Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro Dock specifications: System-on-Module – Sipeed Tang Mega 138K Pro SoC FPGA – GOWIN GW5AST-LV138FPG676A with 138,240 LUT4 1,080 Kb Shadow SRAM (SSRAM) 6,120 Kb Block SRAM […]

LILYGO T-FPGA devkit combines ESP32-S3 WiSoC with Gowin GW1NSR-4C FPGA

ESP32-S3 Gowin FPGA devkit

LILYGO T-FPGA development kit is comprised of an M.2 module with an ESP32-S3 WiFi and Bluetooth wireless microcontroller and a Gowin GW1NSR-4C FPGA with 4,608 LUTs, and a carrier board that gives easy access to I/Os and comes with a 18650 battery holder. The module comes with a USB -C OTG port connected to the ESP32-S3, and a USB-C FPGA port for the FPGA. The “T-FPGA shield” carrier board includes four Pmod interfaces and a STEMMA Qt/Qwiic connector for expansion, plus several pins for 3.3 and GND, and another 20-pin I/O header. LILYGO T-FPGA specifications: Wireless MCU – Espressif Systems ESP32-S3R8 dual-core Tensilica LX7 @ up to 240 MHz with vector instructions for AI acceleration, 512KB RAM, 8MB PSRAM, wireless connectivity Storage – 16MB flash FPGA – Gowin Semiconductors GW1NSR-LV4CQN48PC6/I5 with 4,608 LUT4, 256Kb flash, 64Mb PSRAM, 64Mb Hyperflash, 32Mb NOR flash Connectivity via ESP32-S3 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi […]

$25 Sipeed Tang Nano 20K FPGA board can simulate a RISC-V core, run Linux, retro games

Sipeed Tang Nano 20K

The Sipeed Tang Nano 20K is a low-cost FPGA development board based on Gowin GW2AR-18 FPGA with 20,736 logic cells and 64Mbit RAM, which coupled with  64MBit QSPI flash provides enough resources to simulate a 32-bit RISC-V core booting Linux or playing retro games in an emulator. The FPGA board comes with a USB-C port for power and to load the FPGA bitstream through a BL616 microcontroller that also acts as a USB to serial chip, an HDMI port and an RGB LCD interface for video output, two user buttons, and two rows GPIOs to connect peripherals such as gamepads (through adapters). Sipeed Tang Nano 20K specifications: FPGA – Gowin GW2A-LV18QN88C8I7 with 20,736 logic units (LUT4) 15,552 flip-flops (FF) RAM 41,472 shadow SRAM (S-SRAM) 828K block SRAM (B-SRAM) Numbers of B-SRAM – 46 64Mbit 32-bit SDR SDRAM 48x 18×18 multipliers 2x PLLs 8x I/O Bank Onboard debugger – Bouffalo Labs […]

M5Stack ATOM Display Lite adds HDMI output to ESP32 module

ESP32 HDMI output

M5Stack ATOM Display Lite is a kit based on GOWIN Gowin GW1NR-9C FPGA and LT8618SX RGB to HDMI chip designed to add HDMI output up to 720p to the company’s ESP32-based M5Stack ATOM Lite module. The ATOM Lite sees the ATOM Display Lite kit as an SPI display, but the solution outputs the data to an HDMI monitor or TV with up to 1280×720 resolution and can be used for information display, menu board, and more. ATOM Display Lite specifications: Wireless IoT modules – M5Stack ATOM Lite ESP32-PICO-D4 based module with 240MHz dual-core CPU, 520KB SRAM, 4MB flash, Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth connectivity FPGA – Gowin GW1NR-9C (PDF datasheet) FPGA with 8,640 LUTs used to simulate SPI TFT-LCD data output, HDMI bridge – Lontium Semi LT8618SX RGB to HDMI chip with 24-bit color depth up to 1280×720 output @ 60 fps (optimized frame rate up to 12 ~ 16FPS) Misc- […]

Tang Nano 9K FPGA board can emulate PicoRV32 RISC-V soft-core with all peripherals

Tango Nano 9K

Tang Nano 9K FPGA is the third board from Sipeed based on GOWIN FPGA following the original Tang Nano board with 1K LUT and Tang Nano 4K launched last year with GW1NSR-LV4C (aka GW1NSR-4C) FPGA offering 4068 logical units and 64 Mbit PSRAM, plus an Arm Cortex-M3 hard processor. As its name implies, the new board comes with 9K LUTs, as well as 64 Mbit PSRAM, 32 Mbit Flash, a micro SD card, and video I/O (HDMI, RGB LCD connector) that makes it suitable to run Verilog HDL code emulating a PicoRV32 RISC-V soft-core with all peripherals. Tang Nano 9K FPGA board specifications: FPGA – GOWIN LittleBee GW1NR-9/GW1NR-LV9 8,640 logical units (LUTs) 6,480 flip-flop 17,280 bits shadow SRAM (SSRAM) 486 Kbit block SRAM (BSRAM) 64 Mbit PSRAM 608 Kbit user flash 2x PLL Up to 276x user I/O Storage – 32 Mbit SPI flash. MicroSD card socket Display I/F HDMI […]

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