Configuring FPGA bulk chips

Hi there,

I found a cheap lot of 4 FPGA chips. What would I need in order to use
them? Do I need to create a PCB design? Are there boards for sale where
you can just plug in the chips?

Thank you.

On Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:17:20 -0700, Insight Realm wrote:
Hi there,

I found a cheap lot of 4 FPGA chips. What would I need in order to use
them? Do I need to create a PCB design? Are there boards for sale where
you can just plug in the chips?

Thank you.

Hoo boy.

And you forgot the only important bit of information ... which FPGA.
Manufacturer, series, size, package.

But never mind.

There are no suitable boards ... unless you lucked out and found the
exact FPGA used herehttp://www.fpga4fun.com/http://www.knjn.com/FPGA-PCI.html
orhttp://www.knjn.com/ShopBoards_PCI.html

And I'm not sure he still sells the boards on their own.

So you probably have to get busy with pcb123.http://www.sunstone.com/PCB123-CAD-Software.aspx
Or if your FPGA is in a BGA package, you need something a bit more heavy
duty. Keeping costs down, look at freepcbhttp://www.freepcb.com/
Both run under Wine, if you aren't using Windows.

Then you need to design hardware for them. For which you need tools from
the FPGA manufacturer, Xilinx, Altera, Atmel etc. Check that the FPGA you
have is supported by the free tools before downloading 4GB or so of
tool... You may have to dig around their website to find obsolete (cough,
sorry, legacy* tool versions if these FPGAs aren't current.

But you'll probably find that a new commercially available board is so
cheap it's simply not worth the bother. For examplehttp://enterpoint.co.uk/products/
hashttp://enterpoint.co.uk/products/educational/polmaddie/polmaddie-3/
Lots of I/O, and ready to go.

- Brian