| jackgassett | hello | 12:41 |
|---|---|---|
| kristianpaul | hi jackgassett | 13:00 |
| jackgassett | hello! | 13:01 |
| lekernel | hi | 13:01 |
| lekernel | welcome | 13:01 |
| jackgassett | thanks, I wanted to drop by and chat with some people working on the milkymist project. | 13:02 |
| jackgassett | I have an open source FPGA board called the Papilio One. | 13:02 |
| jackgassett | I was just chatting in my channel over at #GadgetFactory and we were talking about the milkymist project. | 13:03 |
| jackgassett | The Papilio One is a low end FPGA board. | 13:05 |
| lekernel | yup i'm checking that out | 13:05 |
| jackgassett | I thought it would be cool to make milkymist run on the P1 but don't want to do so if it conflicts with the high end Milkymist One board. | 13:06 |
| lekernel | port milkymist soc? | 13:06 |
| lekernel | oh, go ahead | 13:06 |
| jackgassett | I saw the Avnet port and thought that would most likely run on the P1. | 13:06 |
| lekernel | it's definitely not going to conflict, people who buy small boards like yours wouldn't buy a milkymist board anyway | 13:07 |
| jackgassett | But without looking too closely I couldn't tell if the avnet port was just the SOC portion. | 13:07 |
| lekernel | and it'll have a lot less features (no sdram, no video, etc.) | 13:07 |
| jackgassett | well, I do have a VGA video "Wing". | 13:08 |
| lekernel | but still it could be nice to have a small cpu-based system (like the avnet port) | 13:08 |
| jackgassett | And wanted to use Milkymist as a small demo of what can be done with the video wing. | 13:08 |
| lekernel | what's on that video wing? | 13:09 |
| jackgassett | but maybe the video features need more ram? | 13:09 |
| jackgassett | nothing fancy, just resistors. No RAM or anything. | 13:09 |
| lekernel | flickernoise uses around 25 megabytes, the demo firmware about 4 iirc | 13:09 |
| lekernel | you need SDRAM | 13:09 |
| lekernel | also the s3e500 wouldn't accomodate the graphics acceleration | 13:10 |
| jackgassett | ok, what I really want is a SOC system with a video controller section. It wouldn't need a lot of memory because the VGA wing only provides 8 colors. | 13:11 |
| lekernel | what can still be done is a small cpu system and a very low resolution vga out | 13:11 |
| jackgassett | and a future wing will provide 4096 colors. | 13:11 |
| jackgassett | yes, that is exactly what I was hoping for. With the goal being to make it easy for people to make interfaces etc. | 13:12 |
| jackgassett | And do interesting things with the VGA output. | 13:12 |
| jackgassett | cool, I'll have to dig in and look more closely. I really just wanted to touch base with you and make sure it would not be a conflict of interest. | 13:15 |
| kristianpaul | do you have a sdram wind? | 13:15 |
| kristianpaul | winG | 13:15 |
| jackgassett | not right now. I have a new board coming out that uses the Spartan 3A and has SDRAM built in. | 13:15 |
| jackgassett | But it will be a couple more months before it is ready. | 13:15 |
| lekernel | isn't spartan 3a already on its way to obsolescence? | 13:16 |
| kristianpaul | lekernel: does he really need sdram for basic vga stuff? | 13:17 |
| jackgassett | I think the price is right for the type of boards I'm offering. When the board was designed the Spartan 6 still did not have an option that was under $20. | 13:18 |
| kristianpaul | i think actually Fallenou have an ping ping game fot avnet board | 13:18 |
| kristianpaul | too | 13:18 |
| lekernel | usually yes, unless you have a resolution like 320x200 16 colors | 13:18 |
| jackgassett | I just recently saw their Logic optimized options. I would have selected that if it was available at the time. | 13:18 |
| lekernel | but people are already whining because mm isn't running in hd resolutions atm :) | 13:19 |
| kristianpaul | heh | 13:19 |
| jackgassett | I have Pac-Man running on the Papilio One now. | 13:19 |
| kristianpaul | jackgassett: what is your relation with gadget factory btw? | 13:19 |
| kristianpaul | jackgassett: nice | 13:19 |
| kristianpaul | do you have a repo? | 13:20 |
| kristianpaul | what are your plans with mikymist in the future? | 13:20 |
| jackgassett | I'm the owner. | 13:20 |
| jackgassett | kristianpaul: I was getting the link to the repo and just realized the site is down! | 13:21 |
| jackgassett | My VPS provider is usually pretty solid but they seem to be down right now. | 13:21 |
| kristianpaul | ok.. thats hapens | 13:21 |
| jackgassett | ok, back up. | 13:22 |
| jackgassett | http://gadgetforge.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/papilio_arcade/ | 13:22 |
| kristianpaul | lekernel: from the mm1 soc an and avnet port, the mico32 version is same isnt? | 13:22 |
| lekernel | I don't remember | 13:23 |
| jackgassett | kristianpaul: are you asking my plans? | 13:23 |
| kristianpaul | jackgassett: yes | 13:23 |
| jackgassett | Well, my goal for the P1 is to provide a ton of concrete examples of the sort of things you can do with an FPGA. | 13:23 |
| kristianpaul | Your site is nice, i wast aware of poeple seliing fpga based kits | 13:24 |
| jackgassett | So I try to port the best projects I can find out there, usually in just a basic form. And I put together tutorial videos and example projects for doing things like implementing serial ports etc. | 13:24 |
| lekernel | kristianpaul: so milkymist doesn't count? | 13:24 |
| jackgassett | So I would only want to get a limited version of Milkymist running on the P1. | 13:25 |
| kristianpaul | lekernel: no no, that is already on my list !! | 13:25 |
| jackgassett | The board will never do what the Milkymist One can do. | 13:25 |
| kristianpaul | sure | 13:26 |
| jackgassett | but it could bring exposure, at a low cost, to the project. | 13:26 |
| jackgassett | I want to be the Arduino for FPGA's. | 13:26 |
| jackgassett | The idea is that someone buys the P1 for $50 and then browses through the repository and can test out all kinds of cool projects. | 13:27 |
| jackgassett | If they like the limited milkymist project then they can move on to the fully featured Milkymist One board. | 13:28 |
| kristianpaul | :-) | 13:29 |
| jackgassett | I think it is beneficial to everyone but can understand if a project owner doesn't like the idea. | 13:29 |
| kristianpaul | you i'll happy with a mm soc, with just processor, serial port and IO plus vga i guess? | 13:29 |
| jackgassett | yes, I think that would be perfect. | 13:29 |
| lekernel_ | jackgassett: if you start with the avnet port it should be quite easy | 13:30 |
| kristianpaul | indeed | 13:30 |
| jackgassett | does the avnet port include VGA? | 13:30 |
| kristianpaul | nopr | 13:30 |
| lekernel | nope | 13:30 |
| jackgassett | ok, so I would have to add that in. | 13:30 |
| lekernel | but the milkymist vga controller requires a SDRAM bus anyway | 13:30 |
| lekernel | and is generally optimized for SDRAM based systems | 13:31 |
| lekernel | so you wouldn't want that | 13:31 |
| jackgassett | could it be converted to use BRAM for smaller VGA usage? | 13:31 |
| kristianpaul | jackgassett: but includes gpio (sysctl) you can clone that and implement a simple vga | 13:31 |
| kristianpaul | it think you may already have the core for that isnt? | 13:31 |
| lekernel | just use dual port RAM, with one port for CPU access and the other to scan the framebuffer | 13:31 |
| kristianpaul | ah yes :-) | 13:32 |
| jackgassett | ok, and milkymist SOC and software would make it easy to write to the framebuffer... | 13:32 |
| lekernel | it'll a lot easier than messing around with the current core, that is designed to handle memory latencies, bus contention and memory burst access | 13:32 |
| lekernel | just map the framebuffer to system memory, then you can run C code that display nice graphics | 13:33 |
| jackgassett | ok, sounds awesome. | 13:34 |
| kristianpaul | and is easy! | 13:35 |
| jackgassett | When I get ramped up to start working on it I'll keep you guys posted. | 13:35 |
| jackgassett | I think it would be really nice to have a low end board that people could do graphics on. | 13:36 |
| jackgassett | Thats something the Arduino cannot really do. People would appreciate being able to do that easily. | 13:36 |
| lekernel | yeah, in turn it'd be nice to introduce people to milkymist soc as well | 13:37 |
| lekernel | many tech enthusiasts wrongly think that MM1 is super-complex and super-expensive and not for them | 13:37 |
| kristianpaul | even, well i think you can port arduino lagunage to the board, is gcc so well... | 13:37 |
| lekernel | arduino language? ah, it's C :) | 13:38 |
| jackgassett | kristianpaul: already done! | 13:38 |
| kristianpaul | jackgassett: oh ! | 13:38 |
| jackgassett | http://gadgetforge.gadgetfactory.net/gf/project/wiringide/ | 13:38 |
| kristianpaul | lekernel: arduino functions ;-) | 13:38 |
| lekernel | the funny thing is that people who write 'arduino language' are often afraid of C | 13:38 |
| kristianpaul | hehe yes | 13:38 |
| jackgassett | The P1 runs a sketches on an AVR compatible soft processor already. | 13:39 |
| lekernel | which avr clone did you use btw? | 13:39 |
| kristianpaul | i see | 13:39 |
| jackgassett | arduino language is really C++. | 13:39 |
| kristianpaul | navr... ;-) | 13:39 |
| jackgassett | AVR8 clone from Ruslan. | 13:39 |
| jackgassett | off opencores. | 13:39 |
| jackgassett | It is very good so far. | 13:39 |
| lekernel | ah, I think I saw that one already | 13:40 |
| jackgassett | It is the best one I found. | 13:40 |
| jackgassett | most complete. | 13:40 |
| jackgassett | Haven't had any problems running sketches. | 13:40 |
| jackgassett | Part of what I'm doing is trying to make FPGA's not be perceived as so scary. | 13:40 |
| kristianpaul | do you use urjtag to load bitstream the board? | 13:41 |
| jackgassett | a modified version of xc3sprog. | 13:41 |
| jackgassett | also programs SPI flash. | 13:41 |
| lekernel | it was rather slow... and vhdl... | 13:41 |
| jackgassett | I used to use urjtag but sc3sprog is better. | 13:41 |
| kristianpaul | but is integrated with the arduino like IDE? | 13:41 |
| jackgassett | xc3sprog programs the bitstream in 500ms | 13:41 |
| jackgassett | yes. | 13:41 |
| jackgassett | You just press upload and the sketch is running on the board in couple of seconds. | 13:42 |
| kristianpaul | nice work | 13:42 |
| jackgassett | thanks, | 13:42 |
| lekernel | why do you need to program the bitstream for this? | 13:42 |
| jackgassett | I added makefile support to the arduino source. | 13:42 |
| jackgassett | well, with the arduino flow it does this: | 13:42 |
| jackgassett | hex file is generated with avr-gcc. | 13:43 |
| jackgassett | hex file is converted to mem file. | 13:43 |
| jackgassett | mem file is merged into bram in bitstream which contains AVR8 processor. | 13:43 |
| lekernel | ah, ok | 13:43 |
| jackgassett | merged bitstream is loaded with xc3sprog to the FPGA. | 13:43 |
| lekernel | how do you merge the bram into the bitstream? | 13:43 |
| jackgassett | with Xilinx tool. | 13:44 |
| lekernel | argh :) | 13:44 |
| kristianpaul | heh | 13:44 |
| jackgassett | data2mem | 13:44 |
| lekernel | you should try to RE and rewrite that one, it shouldn't be too hard | 13:44 |
| kristianpaul | lekernel: how is it done in navre? | 13:44 |
| lekernel | otherwise people have to install 8GB of auxiliary crap to run your stuff | 13:45 |
| lekernel | kristianpaul: the lm32 core loads the avr program over the CSR bus | 13:45 |
| jackgassett | well, I noticed that avnet and digilent package the data2mem executable with their projects. | 13:45 |
| jackgassett | so I do the same. | 13:45 |
| lekernel | and wishbone | 13:45 |
| jackgassett | does the milkymist SOC implement wishbone? | 13:53 |
| kristianpaul | yes | 13:54 |
| lekernel | partly | 13:54 |
| kristianpaul | but i think is not the upstream version | 13:54 |
| lekernel | it has wishbone and 2 other buses | 13:54 |
| jackgassett | nice, I've been meaning to implement that in a soft processor. | 13:55 |
| jackgassett | never enough time to do all you want to do. | 13:55 |
| jackgassett | I shied away from lm32 because I thought it had a funny license at one point. | 13:56 |
| kristianpaul | all you do is lekernel :-) | 13:56 |
| kristianpaul | mm soc have a nice/simple CSR bus too jackgassett | 13:56 |
| lekernel | it's BSD-like, the sucky part is they have integrated US export restriction clauses in it | 13:56 |
| lekernel | but just like you don't care about the data2mem license, I don't care about them | 13:56 |
| lekernel | maybe lm32 will be replaced at some point, antgreen (who sometimes comes to this channel) is working on moxie which looks promising | 13:57 |
| jackgassett | cool, someone just contributed a Zylin ZPU port called ZPUino. | 13:59 |
| jackgassett | It works with Arduino IDE too. | 13:59 |
| jackgassett | 32 bit, 100Mhz, uses 60% of 250K chip. | 13:59 |
| lekernel | ZPU is so slow it's worthless | 14:01 |
| jackgassett | ah, ok, thats good to know. | 14:02 |
| lekernel | the clock frequency is high, but it takes several dozens of cycles for most instructions that take one cycle on a better arch like AVR | 14:02 |
| jackgassett | well, thats the beauty of FPGA, easy to change. | 14:02 |
| jackgassett | well, not easy. | 14:02 |
| jackgassett | but possible. | 14:02 |
| lekernel | your 100MHz ZPU might perform like a 300kHz AVR | 14:02 |
| jackgassett | sheesh. | 14:03 |
| kristianpaul | milkyduino :D | 14:05 |
| jackgassett | why not. | 14:06 |
| mwalle | mhh seem that there has to be a v3 of my target-lm32/ patchset :( | 17:53 |
| Fallenou | :x | 18:06 |
| nats` | mlouarf | 18:15 |
| kristianpaul | Any comments on http://yasep.org/ ? | 19:31 |
| kristianpaul | argg vhdl.. | 19:35 |
| kristianpaul | [florian]: are you the florian from linuxtogo? | 20:36 |
| --- Sat Feb 12 2011 | 00:00 | |
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