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minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

Malcolm XML posted:

About to purchase an Altera DE0 nano board. Am I getting myself into trouble?
I know nothing about FPGA and hardware design and I don't really understand HDLs.

Also what's a good book on hardware design + vhdl/verilog? Preferably something that doesn't shy away from the math.
Just as a reminder/PSA for FPGA questions and chat, there's also a de facto FPGA thread over here: Verilog Megathread. VHDL chat welcome, despite the thread title.

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minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

Martytoof posted:

I need to write a rather simplistic firmware to replace a fried AVR chip in a student-built board that runs some lab equipment.

I'm not really familiar with the AVR infrastructure but it doesn't seem too difficult. AVR Studio looks like a nice IDE. I'm mostly curious about what sort of programmer I should pick up. I'd like something that I can use to debug on chip, if that's possible. Do the more expensive official programmers support something like JTAG? I presume the $5 hong kong ones on eBay probably won't.
I am not current on AVR stuff, so there may be something better or newer, but for a programmer, I think you want an AVR Dragon.

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

movax posted:

I'm partial to Visual Studio, which it apparently wraps around now, but no, I was OK doing the development with Notepad++ + gcc, that was fine (mostly because I didn't any crazy debugging for this). I was only using Studio to drive the AVR Dragon since I figured, hey, Atmel dev tool + Atmel software == everything works!
I'm still on an old version of AVR Studio, and it works with my Dragons and STK500s fine for programming, but I haven't bought any new AVR stuff since 2006-2007 or so.

I think the big change with AVR Studio 5(?) and later was the inclusion of their own compiler, as well as the Visual Studio shell switch. The version of AVR Studio I have only has an assembler; I use WinAVR to compile.

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

armorer posted:

I am thinking about going through one of these two books next:
Making Embedded Systems
Designing Embedded Hardware
I have both and think they are both worth reading. That said, I think the first is more relevant to your immediate goals.

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

JawnV6 posted:

Go ahead and abandon any FPGA dreams you have then.

e: on my senior digital project the only sleep I got for a few days was the 15~20 minutes between hitting F5 and hearing the *ding* that P&R/bitfile generation was done.
20 minutes to complete PnR? You're living the life of Riley! I could probably get at least a few hours with these designs I'm working with...

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

Sir_Substance posted:

edit: while we are here, I was having interesting thoughts about using them as hardware encryption keys by generating entropy based on the layout of their bad sectors. Viable?
(Just commenting on this part for now.)

Viable in the sense of "could I do that?" Yes. Viable in the sense of "is this a good idea?" No.

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

Mr. Powers posted:

SmartFusion 2. Same controller as the Igloo, but without the ARM core disabled. Allegedly this is the same die as the other packages, but there's the possibility that DM[2:3] are brought out in place of DM[0:1]. It's the only reason I can think it's so screwed up.
I guess it's reasons like this I still end up sitting in conversations with national labs and their partners where someone will mention offhandedly that the reason Group X's NSF-funded research project is going with Vendor Y's Part Z is just because Memory Controllers Are Hard (and said Part Z has one already, despite it probably not being what they would want/need for their project if they got to do their own).

I mean, I don't intend to make it sound like they are trivial or anything, that's totally not the case (ask me how I know). But still.

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo

Hadlock posted:

Out of curiosity, those of you doing this for a living, what kinds of things are you writing code for?
FPGA-based hardware accelerators and the system-side software that loves them.

The company has a few different areas of focus as regards what the FPGAs are used for: cryptography, bioinformatics, image processing, modeling and simulation, security, machine learning, etc.

Lately, I write less code than I'd ideally like to, but I wear a lot of different hats depending on what needs attention.

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo
It's premature, but I'm starting to really like STM32 parts, and the low-cost Discovery boards.

Has anyone here messed with or used the F3 line? Similarly, anyone have any trip reports on messing with/using ChibiOS (ideally on an STM32 part, but in general/on other parts is fine too)?

minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo
So is it just me, or did TI just make Code Composer Studio tools free for use (under their "Technology/Software Publicly Available" license terms) for not only the newly-released CCS 7, but also version 6 and previous? Based on what I can find from some TI pages, including a sticky post in the CCS forum on their e2e.ti.com site, and the "Download CCS" wiki page on processors.wiki.ti.com, it seems like that's exactly what they did. And they did it like last week/this week, if some of these dates I'm seeing are to be believed. The license file for CCS 6 they link to from the same wiki page seems to work in CCS 6, but it almost sounds too good to be true. If so, it happens to be really fortuitous timing for me.

Anyone else able to confirm?

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minidracula
Dec 22, 2007

boo woo boo
Hello thread.

Long time no see.

How you doin'?

If any embedded dev goons are looking for a job in the Seattle area, or are willing to consider relocating, let's chat. Feel free to PM me here with an email address I can reach you at directly.

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