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   Your friendly 'net denizen (cstanhope@social.coop)'s status on Thursday, 21-Nov-2024 11:30:50 JST Your friendly 'net denizen

   Aw, bummer. It looks like makers and hobbyists are not buying enough Lattice FPGAs. Lattice is announcing layoffs:

   https://www.hillsboronewstimes.com/business/hillsboro-semiconductor-industry-takes-another-hit-as-lattice-announces-14-workforce-reduction/article_5bc138c6-a089-11ef-b6ed-c36ab7740877.html

   #FPGA

   • Embed this notice
     YRabbit (yrabbit@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:52 JST YRabbit

     in reply to

     • diegor

     @diegor @cstanhope

     Not ‘they’, but yes the fully open source toolkit is there - https://github.com/YosysHQ/apicula

     Also Gowin itself has a ‘student’ version designed to support 3 types (or families, I can't remember) of FPGAs and in addition the fully licensed version requires only registration on the website.

     https://www.gowinsemi.com/en/support/home/

     valhalla likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     YRabbit (yrabbit@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:54 JST YRabbit

     in reply to

     @cstanhope
     (and have this quartz on the board), Tangmega 138k at a minimum of 50MHz. The iCE40 is 12MHz.

     The fact that you were able to buy an iCE40 in 2015 at a reasonable price (although it depends on how you look at it - you see I don't quote prices for boards of similar power:) ) tells me that their irresponsible and unwise pricing policy in the following years led to the current state of affairs.

   • Embed this notice
     diegor (diegor@social.gl-como.it)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:54 JST diegor

     in reply to

     • YRabbit
     @cstanhope @yrabbit They have some open source tools to use to program this fpga?
   • Embed this notice
     YRabbit (yrabbit@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:55 JST YRabbit

     in reply to

     @cstanhope
     Of course it is possible to conduct research in large volumes, but from the times of the institute I remember that a random sample is usually indicative. I tried again and the result is even worse: 138000 LUTs vs 5300 LUTs.

     I should note that the number of LUTs is such a clear indicator, but also the other board components are not in favour of Lattice - the oldest Tangnano models (even those that are no longer in production) run at a minimum of 27MHz

   • Embed this notice
     Your friendly 'net denizen (cstanhope@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:56 JST Your friendly 'net denizen

     in reply to

     • YRabbit

     @yrabbit I dug up an old invoice. Back in 2015 I was able to get that icestick board for $21.86. Hmm...

   • Embed this notice
     Your friendly 'net denizen (cstanhope@social.coop)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:57 JST Your friendly 'net denizen

     in reply to

     • YRabbit

     @yrabbit You're right about the boards. I haven't tried to price their parts in any sort of volume, but if there is a similar price difference, then yikes!

   • Embed this notice
     YRabbit (yrabbit@mastodon.sdf.org)'s status on Friday, 22-Nov-2024 23:26:58 JST YRabbit

     in reply to

     @cstanhope

     They have no one to blame but themselves - asking for a chip with almost four times less LUTs (maximum 7680) for a price more than ten times more than the Chinese Tangnano25k board, which also holds 25000 LUTs (more than three times ).