Remember Snickerdoodle board? If you don’t, the board is one of the cheapest Xilinx Zynq available on the market, and the project is currently on CrowdSupply, and 75% funded with 28 days left. They’ve just posted an update about a new daughterboard that I found interesting: giggleBits which provides 5 Gigabit Ethernet and an SFP cage on top of WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth connectivity already found on Snickerdoodle board.
giggleBits + snickerdoodle specifications:
- SoC/Memory/Storage/WiFi via Snickerdoodle board:
- SoC
- Xilinx Zynq-7010 dual core Cortex A9 processor @ 667 MHz + FPGA with 430K gates or
- Xilinx Zynq-7020 dual core Cortex A9 processor @ 866 MHz + FPGA with 1.3million gates (~430K ASIC gates)
- System Memory – 512MB or 1GB LPDDR2-800
- Storage – micro SD card slot, 16MB boot flash
- Ti Wilink 8 – single or dual band 802.11 b/g/n WiFi + Bluetooth 4.0
- Expansion – 4x 40-pin TFM headers for access to 100 snickerdoodle JA2/JB1/JB2/JC1 reconfigurable I/O
- SoC
- giggleBits daughterboard
- 5x Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 jacks including dedicated LAN (1x) and WAN (1x) ports to Snickerdoodle
- 1x Gigabit SFP transceiver cage
- Seven-port Audio Video Bridging Gigabit Ethernet switch (That must be the Marvell part on the board, and Marvell Link Street 88E6350R/88E6350 would fit the description [Update: It’s actually the newer 88E6352, which does not have product page yet, but is similar. Here’s the press release…)
- 802.1AS, 802.1Qat, 802.1Qav Audio Video Bridging protocols support timing sensitive A/V and industrial control traffic
- Debugging – Xilinx JTAG header
- Configuration EEPROM
- Power – DC power jack 2.5 x 5.5mm
- Dimensions – 125mm x 120mm
The board supports Linux, ROS, and FreeRTOS, as well as Ubuntu Snappy Core.

One of the reasons I found that board could be interested was the discussion about support for hardware acceleration for NAT, QoS, crypto some of my readers had on Turris Omnia board, and in theory the FPGA could be used to implement and experience various encryption for example, but that means the data would have to be routed to the Xilinx FPGA first instead of just going through the switch.
Marvell AVB (Audio Video Bridge) switch applications listed in the product brief include home networking gear requiring low latency audio/video streaming and guaranteed delivery of VoIP services, industrial network switches, cellular base station backhaul, and automotive infotainment.
While giggleBits board itself is just $85 you’ll also need to add a snickerdoodle with down connectors, meaning the total price would start at $150 with a Zynq-Z7010 board with 512MB RAM, and up to $230 with Zynq-X7020 board with 1GB RAM. You’ll also have to add shipping to the price: $5 to the US, and $20 to most other countries.

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress