Lattice Semiconductors announced several new FPGAs and software tools at the Lattice Developers Conference 2024 which took place on December 10-11. First, the company unveiled the Nexus 2 small FPGA platform starting with the Certus-N2 general-purpose FPGAs offering significant efficiency and performance improvements in this category of devices. The Lattice Avant 30 and Avant 50 were also introduced as mid-range FPGA devices with new capacity options to enable edge-optimized and advanced connectivity applications. Finally, the company releases new versions of Lattice design software tools and application-specific solution stacks to help accelerate customer time-to-market such for edge AI, embedded vision, factory automation, and automotive designs with Lattice Drive. Let’s have a look at the highlights of each announcement. Lattice Nexus 2 small FPGA platform and Certus-N2 FPGA Highlights and benefits of the Lattice Nexus 2 small FPGA platform: Power Efficiency against similar class competitive devices Up to 3x lower power Up […]
$20 ATOMIC Display Base is a low-cost HDMI display driver for M5Stack’s ESP32-based Atom IoT controllers
M5Stack has recently launched the M5Stack ATOMIC Display Base, an HDMI display driver designed to emulate traditional SPI TFT-LCD data output using Gowin GW1NR-9C FPGA and a built-in LT8618SX RGB-to-HDMI chip and designed to work with the company’s Atom IoT controller family based on ESP32 wireless microcontrollers. The module supports up to 720p (1280×720) image output with a 24-bit color depth and has an average frame rate of 12–16 FPS. Additionally, it can be paired with ATOM series hosts for various memory and application needs. These features make this compact device suitable for industrial control displays, smart home information screens, educational and conference presentations, and remote monitoring displays. The only downside of this device is that it requires a display with adaptive resolution scaling to avoid compatibility issues. M5Stack ATOMIC Display Base (HDMI display driver) specifications FPGA – Gowin GW1NR-9C (PDF datasheet) FPGA with 8,640 LUTs used to simulate SPI TFT-LCD data […]
Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 – International deals and coupons
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday used to be a US-only event, it changed many years ago, and we’ve been writing about international Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and coupon codes since 2014, since a large portion of our audience cannot benefit from promotions on Amazon’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday events that will take place from November 21 until December 2 this year. So I’ve gathered some international Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 deals and discount coupon codes from relevant manufacturers and popular online stores such as Aliexpress, Banggood, and others. Aliexpress Black Friday and Cyber Monday event Aliexpress’ Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024 event has already started. There are three periods: Nov 19-21 PST – Warm Up event where users can find and add items to the cart before purchasing during the main event. Nov 22-30 PST – “On Sale” event with discounts up to […]
High-speed data acquisition with Raspberry Pi Pico 2’s HSTX interface and HDMI to USB 3.0 video capture dongle
We previously explained the HSTX high-speed serial transmit interface of the Raspberry Pi RP2350 microcontroller was mostly useful for video outputs and display interfaces since it can only transmit, and not receive data. But Steve Markgraf found another use case for the HSTX interface – high-speed data acquisition – combining a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 board with the DVI Sock board for Pico and one of those cheap MS2130-based HDMI to USB 3.0 video capture dongles. He managed to stream out up to 75 MB/s of real-time data from an overclocked RP2350 to a host computer with a USB 3.0 port. The Adafruit Feather RP2350 HSTX board should also work, but also not been tested. Steve’s “hsdaoh-rp2350” data acquisition over HDMI firmware is based on the dvi_out_hstx_encoder example from Raspberry Pi using the HSTX interface for DVI output and code by Shuichi Takano implementing the HDMI data island encoding required […]
AMD Versal Premium Gen2 SoC FPGA family features Arm Cortex-A72/R5F cores, high-end FPGA fabric, PCIe Gen6, CXL 3.1 interfaces
AMD Versal Premium Series Gen 2 SoC FPGA combines dual-core Cortex-A72 and dual-core Cortex-R5F processors with high-end FPGA fabric with up to 3.2 million logic cells and CXL 3.1 (Compute Express Link), PCIe Gen6, and DDR5/LPDDR5X high-bandwidth interfaces for data center, communication equipment, test & measurement, and aerospace & defense data-intensive applications. AMD Versal Premium Gen2 specifications: CPU cores Dual-core Arm Cortex-A72 application core, 48 KB/32 KB L1 Cache w/ parity & ECC; 1 MB L2 Cache w/ ECC Dual-core Arm Cortex R5F, 32 KB/32 KB L1 Cache, and 256 KB TCM w/ECC Memory – 256MB on-chip with ECC FPGA fabric System Logic Cells – Up to 3,273,480 LUTs – Up to 1,496,448 DSP Engines – Up to 7,616 Interfaces connected to CPU cores 2x Ethernet 2x UART, 2x SPI, 2x I2C 2x CAN-FD 1x USB 2.0 FPGA memory, interfaces, I/Os, and transceivers Up to 327 Mbit memory @ 273 […]
Signaloid C0-microSD is an iCE40UP5K FPGA SoM in the microSD card form factor (Crowdfunding)
Cambridge-based hardware and cloud computing company, Signaloid has begun crowdfunding for the C0-microSD – a tiny, programmable iCE40UP5K FPGA system-on-module (SoM) in a microSD card form factor. It comes preloaded with a RISC-V softcore and users can also load custom FPGA designs onto the board. Part of the Signaloid C0-microSD’s unique appeal is its SD card form factor, which allows it to fit in unused full SD or microSD slots. This allows the implementation of FPGA-based hardware acceleration in systems without traditional expansion interfaces like PCIe M.2 slots. It can also be interfaced with as a standard SD block device and used to bring hardware-accelerated data processing to existing industrial automation, manufacturing, and robotics systems. The iCE40UP5K FPGA SoM has two main use cases: a hot-pluggable FPGA module or a hot-pluggable RISC-V co-processor module. The SD interface allows you to load custom FPGA bitstreams and applications onto the module from […]
Trenz Electronic AXE5-EAGLE-ES devkit features Intel Agilex 5 E-Series SoC FPGA
The Trenz Electronic AXE5-EAGLE-ES devkit (development kit) is powered by an Intel Agilex 5 E-series SoC FPGA, codenamed Sundance Mesa. It is designed for FPGA applications in sectors such as wireless communication, video broadcast, and defense. The kit provides 656k logic elements and a quad-core processing system featuring dual-core Arm Cortex-A76 and Cortex-A55 clusters. It supports high-speed transceivers up to 17 Gbps, PCIe 4.0 connectivity, and integrated memory interfaces like DDR4 and LPDDR4/5. Built on Intel’s 7 technology, the Agilex 5 architecture is optimized for midrange FPGA applications, offering a compact design with efficient performance-per-watt. The FPGA includes enhanced DSP blocks with AI Tensor capabilities for AI and digital signal processing tasks. Additionally, it incorporates Intel’s second-generation Hyperflex Architecture, enabling greater flexibility for handling dynamic workloads. Previously, we covered the iW-RainboW-G58M system-on-module, which features Intel’s Agilex 5 SoC FPGA E-series, a cost-effective, midrange solution for intelligent edge and embedded applications. […]
Altera’s 7nm Agilex 3 SoC FPGA features Cortex-A55 cores, AI Tensor Block, DSP, 10 GbE, and more.
Altera, an independent subsidiary of Intel, has launched the Altera Agilex 3 SoC FPGA lineup built on Intel’s 7nm technology. According to Altera, these FPGAs prioritize cost and power efficiency while maintaining essential performance. Key features include an integrated dual-core Arm Cortex A55 processor, AI capabilities within the FPGA fabric (tensor blocks and AI-optimized DSP sections), enhanced security, 25K–135K logic elements, 12.5 Gbps transceivers, LPDDR4 support, and a 38% lower power consumption versus competing FPGAs. Built on the Hyperflex architecture, it offers nearly double the performance compared to previous-generation Cyclone V FPGAs. These features make this device useful for manufacturing, surveillance, medical, test and measurement, and edge computing applications. Altera’s Agilex 3 AI SoC FPGA specifications Device Variants B-Series – No definite information is available C-Series – A3C025, A3C050, A3C065, A3C100, A3C135 SoC FPGAs Hard Processing System (HPS) – Dual-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A55 up to 800 MHz that supports secure […]