ECP5 board ?

[Jesus Arias]

Hi,

I'm looking for a board with an FPGA more capable than ICE40s and also supported by the toolchain. The ECP5 seems to be a good chip, but it has a BGA package that precludes any manual soldering, so an already built board is what I'm looking for.

Does anybody have any suggestion about some particular board? I'd like something simple, without too much additions, and with an easy interface for configuration.

Thanks, & good night

[Jo mo]

Hi Jesus,

i am using colorligth boards ( i5 and i9) . they are SoDIM boards with ecp5 fpga!  that can be connected on a small "motherboard

see some info :

https://tomverbeure.github.io/2021/01/22/The-Colorlight-i5-as-FPGA-development-board.html

https://github.com/wuxx/Colorlight-FPGA-Projects

and you can buy them   here   or here

And of course, you can design your own motherboard (with the connectors and interfaces you need) !  (i did that for a project)

remark: there is also a sodim colorligth i9+ board wich has a xilinx artix_7 fpga  (i did not tried!)

Have a nice day

[beni...@gmail.com]

Hello Jesus, 

You can use the Colorlight 5A-75B o Colorlight 5A-75F that you can find in Aliexpress. They are very cheap, but you need to modify if you want to use the pins in bidirectional mode. (https://zeromips.org/posts/2022-05-29-5a-75b/ )

You have more information of the boards here:

https://github.com/q3k/chubby75/
https://github.com/kholia/Colorlight-5A-75B

The boards are compatible with IceStudio too. But you need a JTAG programmer. Get information of the possible programmers here (https://github.com/benitoss/ColorLight_FPGA_boards?tab=readme-ov-file#jtag-programmers)

Best Regards,

Fernando Mosquera

[charli va]

Hi Jesus!, i'm using this for several projects:

https://es.aliexpress.com/item/1005002997672924.html?pdp_npi=4%40dis!EUR!13.69!13.69!!!112.30!112.30!%402141069c17587412247676686e90e2!12000023135605005!affd!!!&aff_fsk=_oEtmxQ9&src=PriceNinjaPL&aff_platform=aff_feeds&aff_short_key=_oEtmxQ9&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23084905822&gbraid=0AAAAADprV05QL_UgEziOxjo2RadC86k0a&gclid=CjwKCAjwu9fHBhAWEiwAzGRC_7UyKXh2vMf0TD2s1lSZZnusThHo6ndHncDCLdezGDPR8Q-f8otGzxoCugcQAvD_BwE

It's the same thing Joaquim mentioned before, if you're developing your own board it's very easy to put a SODIMM connector on it, the i9 is very powerful, compatible with yosys (you need initialiy a jtag for program it) Fernando has a lot of documentation about this.

...and they are very cheap with the extras they already have (flash, SDRAM...)

--
Has recibido este mensaje porque estás suscrito al grupo "FPGAwars: explorando el lado libre" de Grupos de Google.
Para cancelar la suscripción a este grupo y dejar de recibir sus mensajes, envía un correo electrónico a fpga-wars-explorando-el...@googlegroups.com.
Para ver este debate, visita https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fpga-wars-explorando-el-lado-libre/05c82ad3-8144-49f7-8474-2f767bd346c1n%40googlegroups.com.

[charli va]

Jesus, I've been searching because I thought I considered this option for a project a while back, and it turns out the ecp5 model https://www.mouser.es/ProductDetail/Lattice/LFE5U-45F-6TG144C?qs=TuK3vfAjtkVZ0DJwTeKEkg%3D%3D

is in tqfp144 format (although the photo shows bga) 45kLUTS

[Jesus Arias]

Thanks everybody,

I see the Colorlight boards are the preferred. But I don't find them very convenient, either the version with the angled connectors, only good for ribbon cables, or with the PCI-like edge connector that always requires another base board. And both require a JTAG programmer.

Here we have found the "Orangecrab" board (https://github.com/orangecrab-fpga/orangecrab-hardware ) that is more in the line of what we like, but it still has some problems, mainly  the use of a preprogrammed USB bootloader that forces you to unplug and replug the USB cable every time you want to try a new bitstream (and be careful about not overwriting the bootloader bitstream in the flash). 

[charli va]

I found the 45K TQFP 144 package, and it's available,It is the largest lattice in this format:

https://www.digikey.es/es/products/detail/lattice-semiconductor-corporation/LFE5U-45F-6TG144C/18138924

It's in stock. Can we buy it? XDD

--

Has recibido este mensaje porque estás suscrito al grupo "FPGAwars: explorando el lado libre" de Grupos de Google.
Para cancelar la suscripción a este grupo y dejar de recibir sus mensajes, envía un correo electrónico a fpga-wars-explorando-el...@googlegroups.com.

Para ver este debate, visita https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fpga-wars-explorando-el-lado-libre/74c7e906-9048-4ba3-837c-0d2f29a83974n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jesus Arias]

Hi,

I got my hands on an Orangecrab-25 board with 25K-LUT ECP5. And these are my first impressions:

- Definitely, a RESET button is strongly needed, unless you are happy with unplugging an reconnecting the USB cable every time you want to upload a bitstream. (The RESET signal is at least available on the pins, so, a switch to ground can act as the missing reset button)

- The USB bootloader is slow, maybe because the SPI flash is erased and reprogrammed every time a bitstream is uploaded. The JTAG programming is still untested.

- The included DDR3 DRAM is hard to use, unless an already built controller example is provided (I'm still searching for it ;) A prebuilt example is running Linux on a RiscV with 64MB of RAM (the chip has 128MB) but its sources aren't very useful for me...

- The Analog section (multiplexer plus LVDS comparator) is going to be slow due to a long RC constant, and probably also very noisy due to the switched power regulators of the supply rails. I don't expect much from it.

And I also want to present a comparative between the ECP5 and the ICE40, both synthesizing the same design (a simpler RiscV core, plus 8KB of internal memory, plus an USB_CDC pseudo-UART):

ICE40                ECP5

------------------------------------------------

LCs:  4944           FF:     980

                     Comb.: 5311

                     RAMW:    24

                     ---------------------

                     Total: 6315

BRAMs: 16 (50%)      DP16K:  4 (7.2%)

max. CLK: 29MHz      37MHz  (still runs at 48MHz)

-------------------------------------------------

Well, the ECP5 requires more logic cells, about a 30% more than the ICE40 version, but with almost 25000 LCs we have a lot more space for designs.

In the ECP5 the internal BRAMs are 4 times the size of the ICE40 (16Kbit or 2Kbytes), totaling 112Kbytes, that's a lot more. Also, in the ECP5 the LCs can be turned into small SRAMs (listed as RAMW, or distributed RAM...) 

Finally, the clock frequency is higher for the ECP5, but not much higher, only a 30% more.

Regards

[charli va]

Interesting comparative! i'm joining to the party very soon! ;)

I've had my eye on this DDR3 controller for a while now; at least it looks like it was hand-written in Verilog and not just thrown out by some automated generator. I'll send it to you in case you want to take a look.

https://github.com/ultraembedded/core_ddr3_controller

Good afternoon!

Para ver este debate, visita https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fpga-wars-explorando-el-lado-libre/185803d5-08d4-46d6-80b6-e997615ca01an%40googlegroups.com.

[Jesus Arias]

Hi, I think I made a mistake in the LC count for the ECP5. Each RAMW is going to take 8 LCs (1 PFU). 

But the interesting aspect of this distributed RAM is that is very well suited for small memory blocks with asynchronous reads like register banks. In fact, when synthesizing an RiscV with 32 registers instead of 16 (RV32E) the RAMW count raised from 24 to 40, meaning a single RAMW provides storage for 32 bits (This equals 4bits per LUT, instead of the 0.5bits/LUT in the ICE40 case)

Nice day

[charli va]

Very interesting i don't know the detail of the RAMW thanks for this analysis!

Para ver este debate, visita https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/fpga-wars-explorando-el-lado-libre/1511f3fb-7a09-4f04-a8cb-dd1488b85f20n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jo mo]

Hola Jesus and Charli,

Welcome to the ECP5 users family ;-).

For programming faster, as Benito teached us in the group, the best is using:

- FT2232H boards (better for designs where you also need a COM port for communication with the computer) 

- FT232H boards (no com port simultaneously connected) 

- or  even maybe  FT4232  (that i did not tested, which as even more interfaces/com ports possible)

Just tell us if you needs information on this FTDI programmers subject.

For the resources usage, so far in my icestudio  synthtetised designs, i found that ecp5 ususes slightly less logic/LUT than ice40. But never-mind the important is to have enough of them to fit all our designs ;-)

Have a nice evening guys