Download: MP3
RSS Feed: Link
Twitter: @MacroFab
Runtime: (00:35:20)
Hosts:
Parker Dillmann
Stephen Kraig
Guest:
N/A
Podcast Notes
- Stephen
- Community Dice
- What’s the highest frequency signal a home gamer can generate? (square and sin waves?)
- Parker
- New Engineering Article
- Raspberry Pi Compute Module Motherboard
- Continuation from the Compute Module board from last year
- Added the PCM5122 audio DAC
- Learning about USB HUB design
- TUSB2046B
- TPS2044 for overcurrent protection
- Only rated for 500mA
- USB spec says only 120uF cap per hub required but 100uF per port is recommended with low ESR
- USB DM/DP signals require around 227-ohmtermination resistors
- Optional filter of 22pF recommended for EMI suppression
- This creates a “low pass” filter with a cut off of 267.9 MHz
- 12M bit/sec full Speed USB 12MHz, well under this cut off
- Rapid Fire Opinion (R.F.O.)
- Mouser now Authorized Distributor for Espressif
- They make the ESP8266 Wifi stuff
- FPGA Dev boards
- Arrows $30 FPGA Board
- Altera MAX 10
- Built in USB programming
- TinyFPGA Lattice
- $12 but requires a $9 programmer
- Arrows $30 FPGA Board
- Mouser now Authorized Distributor for Espressif
- MacroFab is Hiring!
- Apply here
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Parker printed some 3-sided coins
The Raspberry PI 3 Compute Module motherboard Parker is working on. Still lots of parts to add!
Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!
1 Comment
Hi Guys, Just listened and have some comments about MAX10 FPGAs having just had MacroFab build me some MAX10 boards (look for the ezPixel project). MAX10 is advertised by Intel as an FPGA. What makes you think of it as a CPLD is the fact that it has onboard FLASH and can self-boot, i.e. no external boot prom is required. However, inside it is basically a 4-Lut FPGA architecture similar to their Cyclone FPGA devices.
They are quite capable and a 10M08 with over 8000 flops can do quite a bit. I have no trouble instantiated a very capable 32-bit NIOS soft processor as well as a pig pile of my own logic. I am somewhat mystified how Arrow or their partner, Trenz-Electronics in Germany, can sell their MAX1000 board profitably at $30. They include SDRAM, FLASH, an FTDI 2232H chip and other things. At 500 pieces the FPGA alone is over $11. I’m guessing they used at least a 4-layer PCB due to the MAX10 BGA package. I worked hard to keep mine at 2 layers to reduce costs, but I didn’t need to break out as many I/O pins. They need more I/O pins due to the SDRAM. They might also need to use tighter trace/space geometry — again a guess — which could also increase costs.
I know that volume is everything with electronic widgets and Arrow shows almost 1000 in stock. Trenz has more so perhaps they are in cahoots to build in larger volumes? Arrow can also subsidize parts costs as they are a parts distributor. They might also be getting some cost subsidization from Intel and FTDI. And, they may be selling it at cost or at a loss since they are big enough to absorb small losses in the hopes of generating future customers — a loss-leader item.
You guys can compare the Arrow board to the pricing of ezPixels in whatever quantity you want. There are fewer components on an ezPixel and your pricing won’t include production testing. I’m not complaining about your pricing, rather, just trying to illustrate how hard it is for us small folks to compete with the big boys. They have advantages that I can’t compete with directly. Someone like me can maybe afford to risk build 100 piece quantity, not 1000’s.
Heavy sigh…