Category Archives: FPGA

800×600 Video Output for Small Systems

Posted on September 2, 2015 by e8johan

The Mesa-Video is a low cost, low power, small open source hardware/software solution for providing graphics from embedded projects. It is, basically, a graphics card with an UART interface. The graphics card side of the solution can display text and … Continue reading →

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MEGA65 – a modern 8-bit system

Posted on April 23, 2015 by e8johan

Paul Gardner-Stephen and MEGA, museum of electronic games and art, just announced the MEGA65. It is a modern day 8-bit computer. It is compatible enough with the C64 to run old ROMs and programs, while it supports modern interfaces such as … Continue reading →

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miniSpartan3 – an affordable FPGA board

Posted on April 8, 2015 by e8johan

The miniSpartan3, from Scarab Hardware, is an affordable FPGA board. As the name indicates, it comes with an FPGA from the Spartan series. At $25, you get a XC3A50 FPGA, while at $35, you get a XC3A200. This puts the board … Continue reading →

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Open Source GPGPU

Posted on March 10, 2015 by e8johan

A GPGPU is a graphical processing unit, but with adaptations to make it possible to use it for general purpose computing as well. For those of you who followed Intel’s Larrabee project – that is a GPGPU. Intel’s project was … Continue reading →

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NES in an FPGA

Posted on February 11, 2013 by e8johan

FPGAs are a fascinating piece of technology. Gaming can also fascinate. Merging the two in a retro recreation of a the classical NES means that I have to write about it. Ludde (from Gothenburg, just as myself) built a NES … Continue reading →

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Calculate Hashes in Hardware

Posted on January 17, 2013 by e8johan

We recently wrote about BORPH, a Linux version that could launch hardware processes on configurable hardware systems, i.e. FPGAs. The question that always pops up is what kind of process you would like to run in hardware. By pure coincidence, … Continue reading →

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Flexible OS for Flexible Hardware

Posted on January 16, 2013 by e8johan

BORPH is an operating system designed for FPGA-based hardwares. It is basically a Linux kernel that is able to spawn what is known as hardware processes, thus executing in hardware. The develoment is done at Berkley, and the name of … Continue reading →

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Build a Custom FPGA

Posted on December 3, 2012 by e8johan

FPGAs are monsters of flexible logic. If you have a problem that can be pipelined or run in parallel  you can perform miracles. If performance isn’t your focus, you can emulate beautiful machines from the past. Over at Nick’s blog, there … Continue reading →

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FPGA Board for the Masses

Posted on September 26, 2012 by e8johan

Wavenumber has announced the FPGA MARK-1 – the worlds first maker-adapted FPGA board. The board sports a Xilinx Spartan 6 LX9 FPGA and a small MCU for control. The MCU contains a bootloader in ROM, meaning that you cannot brick the device … Continue reading →

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Xilinx Zynq-7000

Posted on September 7, 2011 by e8johan

In this article, we welcome our first guest writer. Tryggve Mathiesen, CTO at InformAsic writes about the challenges in the market and how Xilinx Zynq-7000 fits into the future of high-performance electronics. Embedded Designers are asking for more More than … Continue reading →

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