jonathan322
Well-known member
@xxxajk , @miciwan , @KurtE , and @Rezo : I was going to post this here:
https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/68228-Ideas-on-a-T4-parallel-library-using-FlexIO
But I think it would be a little off-topic and tangential. Anyway...
When it comes to fast parallel I/O, or projects with MCUs that require modified peripherals and/or high speed peripherals, such as HDMI, I usually go to the Arduino Vidor 4000, which is just an Arduino SAMD21 mated with a simple, inexpensive Cyclone 10 FPGA. As I have mentioned to some of you, there is no complicated JTAG programming required, because the Vidor can upload the FPGA bitstream through a basic Arduino sketch. And the Quartus software required to employ the HDL for the Cyclone10 is free and easy to use for this purpose. For most things, though, such as graphics peripherals using the HDMI, there are pre-made bitstreams, so you don't even need to touch Quartus, in many cases. The FPGA and SAMD21 can communicate through common pins and/or peripherals, such as SPI.
The problem is that, while the Cyclone 10 is more than adequate for most of the things you would want to combine with an MCU, the SAMD21 is pretty plain vanilla. It doesn't hold a candle to the Teensy 4 or 4.1 (or earlier, for that matter). A device that combined the power and speed of an FPGA with the robust features and speed of a Teensy (in a Teensy 4.1 form factor) would be incredible!
Other shortcomings of the Vidor include a paucity of usable pins. There is another platform called the Papilio Duo that has more I/O, but it isn't breadboardable, it is hard to program, and it uses an outdated Spartan-6 (Xilinx) that cannot be programmed by the current Xilinx IDE - Vivado. It really requires the installation of a Linux VM and outdated software. And the microcontroller is an Atmel ATMega32U4.
A Teensy-FPGA hybrid that addresses the above issues could be a game changer - and affordable, to boot.
https://forum.pjrc.com/threads/68228-Ideas-on-a-T4-parallel-library-using-FlexIO
But I think it would be a little off-topic and tangential. Anyway...
When it comes to fast parallel I/O, or projects with MCUs that require modified peripherals and/or high speed peripherals, such as HDMI, I usually go to the Arduino Vidor 4000, which is just an Arduino SAMD21 mated with a simple, inexpensive Cyclone 10 FPGA. As I have mentioned to some of you, there is no complicated JTAG programming required, because the Vidor can upload the FPGA bitstream through a basic Arduino sketch. And the Quartus software required to employ the HDL for the Cyclone10 is free and easy to use for this purpose. For most things, though, such as graphics peripherals using the HDMI, there are pre-made bitstreams, so you don't even need to touch Quartus, in many cases. The FPGA and SAMD21 can communicate through common pins and/or peripherals, such as SPI.
The problem is that, while the Cyclone 10 is more than adequate for most of the things you would want to combine with an MCU, the SAMD21 is pretty plain vanilla. It doesn't hold a candle to the Teensy 4 or 4.1 (or earlier, for that matter). A device that combined the power and speed of an FPGA with the robust features and speed of a Teensy (in a Teensy 4.1 form factor) would be incredible!
Other shortcomings of the Vidor include a paucity of usable pins. There is another platform called the Papilio Duo that has more I/O, but it isn't breadboardable, it is hard to program, and it uses an outdated Spartan-6 (Xilinx) that cannot be programmed by the current Xilinx IDE - Vivado. It really requires the installation of a Linux VM and outdated software. And the microcontroller is an Atmel ATMega32U4.
A Teensy-FPGA hybrid that addresses the above issues could be a game changer - and affordable, to boot.
