TinyFPGA Boards

[rickman]

http://tinyfpga.com/

The web site does not work 100% as there are some broken links, but all the
pages are there. They currently offer three boards, A1/A2 provide two sizes
of the Lattice XO2, the 256 and 1200. These two boards are basically just
break out boards with nothing else other than decoupling caps and a ferrite
bead. The B2 board uses the ICE40LP8K and comes with an SPI flash chip, a
16 MHz clock, PSU chips and a USB programming interface.

One thing I noticed is that the TinyFPGA-B2 doesn't have a USB interface
chip on it. The USB data pins go directly to the ICE40 chip. To the best
of my knowledge there is no USB interface on the ICE40 chip. So I don't get
how this boots up the chip. Maybe they have a way of faking out the USB
interface with a special driver, but that doesn't sound very plausible to me.

Anyone know much about the TinyFPGA boards?

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

Den onsdag den 3. januar 2018 kl. 18.55.36 UTC+1 skrev rickman:

http://tinyfpga.com/

The web site does not work 100% as there are some broken links, but all the
pages are there. They currently offer three boards, A1/A2 provide two sizes
of the Lattice XO2, the 256 and 1200. These two boards are basically just
break out boards with nothing else other than decoupling caps and a ferrite
bead. The B2 board uses the ICE40LP8K and comes with an SPI flash chip, a
16 MHz clock, PSU chips and a USB programming interface.

One thing I noticed is that the TinyFPGA-B2 doesn't have a USB interface
chip on it. The USB data pins go directly to the ICE40 chip. To the best
of my knowledge there is no USB interface on the ICE40 chip. So I don't get
how this boots up the chip. Maybe they have a way of faking out the USB
interface with a special driver, but that doesn't sound very plausible to me.

they must boot the fpga from flash, looking at the verilog repository from the bootloader the USB is a softcore

 

[rickman]

lasselangwadtchristensen@gmail.com wrote on 1/3/2018 1:23 PM:

Den onsdag den 3. januar 2018 kl. 18.55.36 UTC+1 skrev rickman:
http://tinyfpga.com/

The web site does not work 100% as there are some broken links, but all the
pages are there. They currently offer three boards, A1/A2 provide two sizes
of the Lattice XO2, the 256 and 1200. These two boards are basically just
break out boards with nothing else other than decoupling caps and a ferrite
bead. The B2 board uses the ICE40LP8K and comes with an SPI flash chip, a
16 MHz clock, PSU chips and a USB programming interface.

One thing I noticed is that the TinyFPGA-B2 doesn't have a USB interface
chip on it. The USB data pins go directly to the ICE40 chip. To the best
of my knowledge there is no USB interface on the ICE40 chip. So I don't get
how this boots up the chip. Maybe they have a way of faking out the USB
interface with a special driver, but that doesn't sound very plausible to me.

they must boot the fpga from flash, looking at the verilog repository from the bootloader the USB is a softcore

I didn't think of that. The ICE40 has a one time programmable configuration
memory, but I believe the board has an SPI flash. Can you tell they are
booting the SPI flash? Is the Verilog code for the USB interface provided?
I guess I can take a look.

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998

 

[rickman]

rickman wrote on 1/3/2018 3:27 PM:

lasselangwadtchristensen@gmail.com wrote on 1/3/2018 1:23 PM:
Den onsdag den 3. januar 2018 kl. 18.55.36 UTC+1 skrev rickman:
http://tinyfpga.com/

The web site does not work 100% as there are some broken links, but all the
pages are there. They currently offer three boards, A1/A2 provide two sizes
of the Lattice XO2, the 256 and 1200. These two boards are basically just
break out boards with nothing else other than decoupling caps and a ferrite
bead. The B2 board uses the ICE40LP8K and comes with an SPI flash chip, a
16 MHz clock, PSU chips and a USB programming interface.

One thing I noticed is that the TinyFPGA-B2 doesn't have a USB interface
chip on it. The USB data pins go directly to the ICE40 chip. To the best
of my knowledge there is no USB interface on the ICE40 chip. So I don't get
how this boots up the chip. Maybe they have a way of faking out the USB
interface with a special driver, but that doesn't sound very plausible to
me.

they must boot the fpga from flash, looking at the verilog repository from
the bootloader the USB is a softcore

I didn't think of that. The ICE40 has a one time programmable configuration
memory, but I believe the board has an SPI flash. Can you tell they are
booting the SPI flash? Is the Verilog code for the USB interface provided?
I guess I can take a look.

Yep, Verilog for a USB to SPI connection it appears. It's been a while
since I dug into the documents for the various boot modes. I can't tell if
this allows the device to be booted over the USB port or if it only allows
the SPI flash to be programmed and the chip booted from that. The fact that
there is a "host presence" timeout which then seems to trigger a boot, I'm
guessing the ICE40 boots this program from the non-volatile on-chip memory
and then allows the user to control the chip or if no host is attached it
boots from the SPI flash.

--

Rick C

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms,
on the centerline of totality since 1998