[tcherasaro]

Hey, guys. Looks like I am late to the show with my comment here, but I am pushing 20 years in FPGA dev experience and hoping that maybe I can share some perspective on what seems to be a reoccurring theme on HN:

Why aren’t there any open FPGAs or at least more Open FPGA tools? Why are vendor FPGA tools so huge, terrible and hard to use? Open FPGA tools are better and the way to go! etc.

In one of Dr. Cutress’ questions he states and then asks: > … they're just hard to develop for. You need to know how to use them before you use them , which sounds like the wrong way to learn how to code! What exactly is Lattice doing to kind of ease that transition for people who may understand software, but are kind of new to the hardware?

Why is this? What can Lattice do?

It’s because one does not “code” an FPGA, they design a microchip and that process involves a lot more than writing code. It is pretty hard to do right. FPGA is on the spectrum of VLSI microchip implementation technologies. That’s why they compare FPGA’s to ASICs in the interview.

Don’t believe me? Look at this article: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/vlsi_design/vlsi_design_fpga_...

So in general the progression is FPGA -> GA (Gate Array) -> Standard Cell ASIC -> Full Custom ASIC

FPGA development is microchip development. It requires a great deal of tacit knowledge, experience and a background in electrical engineering and digital design and a number of other skills to do well.

In order to develop open tools for these devices most of the devs in the community would have to have a lot of this knowledge and experience and most if not all of the FPGA vendor’s IP on all of their devices in order to work on an open tool chain. In the end an open tool chain will do little to alleviate all the pains of the chip design process anyway so it really isn’t worth the effort to make open tools. It is way easier to just use the vendor’s tools once you know what you are doing. Most of the tools have gotten much better in the last 20 years.

That is why you will not see open tools for anything but the smallest and simplest devices that can be reverse engineered.

IMO, the best thing lattice can do for someone who doesn’t have any experience with the technology is to point them to the Lattice Partners program to find an expert to help.

I am probably not making any friends here by saying this, but I welcome any counterpoints we might argue together here.

[reasonabl_human]

Thanks for the perspective. For someone who used to study EE / basic digital design but took the software route as a career, do you have suggestions on FPGA projects to contribute to on the side akin to the software world’s ability to contribute to an endless number of open source projects? I would love to chip away at learning how to work with anything more complex than the academic Xilinx boards we used in school years ago.