←back to thread

A programmable FPGA SoM in the tiny microSD form factor

(www.crowdsupply.com)
90 points LorenDB | 1 comments | 15 Nov 24 13:48 UTC | HN request time: 0.308s | source
Show context
mattofak ◴[15 Nov 24 23:46 UTC] No.42152635[source]▶
This sounds fun to play with and get feet wet in HDL, but it's only a lattice ice40, I have no idea what you'd seriously do with this. Usually ice40 are used as glue logic, or multiplexing/buffering a bunch of ADC/DAC chips so the processor can do large data transfers instead of a bunch of tiny ones.

The website claims hardware acceleration and... I doubt they got timing closure on the soft CPU at anything greater than 100MHz and you still have to get data to/from it at likely 30~40 MB/s via an SDMMC bus.

replies(3): >>42152800 #>>42153566 #>>42177982 #
1. Neywiny ◴[18 Nov 24 22:51 UTC] No.42177982[source]▶
Agreed. Not enough processing power for anything onboard, no IO out the back (seems like a missed opportunity tbh) for expansion to do fun things. Not sure what I'd do with this.

A quick search shows Hirose has a 0.5mm tall FPC connector that could fit 25 contacts within the width. Looking at their pictures, they have some spare height (unsure if enough though) and depth to move components forward. Even with good grounding, idk 12 IO is a decent amount.