alt Hacker NewsFPGAs need their "Arduino moment". There have been so, so, so many projects where I've wanted just a little bit of moderately-complicated glue logic. Something pretty easy to dash off in VHDL or whatever. But the damn things require so much support infrastructure: they're complicated to put down on boards, they're complicated to load bitstreams in to, they're complicated to build those bitstreams for, and they're complicated to manage the software projects for.
As soon as they reach the point where it's as easy to put down an FPGA as it is an old STM32 or whatever, they'll get a lot more interesting.
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The strong point of FPGAs is their versatility. If you wanted an FPGA that would be easy to put on a board, you’d have to drop support for multiple voltage rails and thus multiple IO standards, which is exactly what you don’t want to lose.
Building bitstreams is IMO not complicated. (I just copy a Makefile from a previous project and go from there.)
Loading them is a matter of plugging in a JTAG cable and typing “make program”.
I don’t know what you mean with the “manage SW projects for”?
They can't, by nature of the proprietary bitstream. Arduino was only built thanks to ability to do whatever they wanted with open source compilers
Sounds like a PLD might suit your usecase? Simpler than an FPGA, programmed like an EEPROM, perfect for glue logic.
It's basically because they're so locked down, hard to get docs, stupid toolchains and ides like others have mentioned.
It's like fpga companies don't want people using them, much like others like the pixart sensor I wanted to use: NDA because some parasite dipshit executive or manager thinks that register layouts are extremely sensitive information.
I've had dozens of uses for an fpga...but every single time I just can't be bothered. Why, when they make it a pain in the ass on purpose.
> they're complicated to put down on boards
https://gowinsemi.com/en/product/detail/46/
- Requires just 1V2 + 3V3
- Available in QFN
- Bitstream is saved in internal flash or programmed to SRAM via a basic JTAG sequence
> FPGAs need their "Arduino moment".
This is exactly it. Why hasn't some expert group produced a very simple open design board with a simple Arduino-like IDE for FPGAs? Make it easy to access and use, get it into the hands of makers/hobbyists and watch the apps/ecosystem explode.
As an example, one could provide soft-cores for 8051/RISC-V etc. right out of the box with a menu of peripherals to mix and match. Provide a simple language library wrapper say over SystemVerilog (or whatever the community settles on) just like Arduino did (with C++) that makes it "easy" to program the FPGA.
For apps, one good example would be putting TinyML (or any other ML/LLM models) on a FPGA. This would take advantage of the current technology wave to make this project a success.
PS: Folks might find the book FPGAs for Software Programmers by Dirk Koch et al. (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-26408-0) useful.
It's already happened, people just haven't realized. iCE40-UP5K costs a few bucks, needs minimal support circuitry, and is supported by FOSS toolchains (yosys). Fun packages like the pico-ice bring it all the way down to the entry-level arduino crowd. It just doesn't have the marketing mindshare.