Everybody who spends sufficient time taking part in round with electronics will finally come to the purpose the place single-board computer systems and microcontrollers can’t get the job executed. If a challenge requires huge processing parallelization or ultra-low latency efficiency, an FPGA goes to be a significantly better alternative. That may be a really advanced and costly world to get into, nevertheless. As such, it’s all the time clever for the hobbyist to be looking out for cheap and accessible FPGA growth boards which might be appropriate for a variety of purposes.
Block diagram of the {hardware} (📷: Vicharak)
One such board, referred to as the SHRIKE-lite, has simply been launched. The SHRIKE-lite is very attention-grabbing for these new to FPGAs, as a result of it’s outfitted with not solely a really succesful chip within the Renesas SLG47910V FPGA, however it additionally sports activities a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. A 6-bit channel was constructed into the design to permit for communication between the FPGA and microcontroller, so processing can happen on each chips, as wanted, to enrich each other’s strengths.
The FPGA packs a good 1,120 five-input LUTs and has 14 uncovered GPIO pins. The microcontroller has a further 23 GPIO pins and everybody’s favourite 32-bit dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ processor that may be overclocked far past the 200 MHz that it’s rated for. Except for that, the board has a minimalistic design to maintain prices low. There’s a QSPI flash chip for configuration and storage, a pair of LEDs, and a USB-C connector for energy and programming.
The board pinout (📷: Vicharak)
All the software program toolchain for the board is open supply, so it ought to be supported for a while to come back. That’s necessary, as a result of with no method to program the gadget, it will rapidly wind up on the backside of your spare components bin, by no means once more to reemerge.
The SHRIKE-lite is extraordinarily cheap, coming in at simply $4. However relying on the place you might be on the earth, delivery would possibly chew you. There’s a $28 delivery payment to get this board to the US, so depend the prices earlier than you click on the order button. Hopefully higher distribution strategies might be established sooner or later, as a result of the SHRIKE-lite positive can be good to have readily available.
