Spartixed is another low cost FPGA board launched on Kickstarter, powered by Xilinx Spartan 6 LX4 FPGA, with a 7-segment display, some headers and buttons, and targeting people who want to learn VHDL/Verilog on the cheap.
Spartixed board specifications:
- FPGA – Xilinx Spartan 6 LX4 FPGA (exact part not disclosed)
- Storage – 16 Mbit flash for program, I2C or SPI EEPROM
- Display – 3 digit 7- Segment Display
- USB – 1x micro USB port for power and debugging
- Expansion – 26-pin unpopulated header, optional SPI Bus A/D Converter
- Debugging – 14-pin JTAG connector, UARt port via USB connector
- Misc – 3x push button switches, 8 slide switches for input, 2x user LEDs, 1x power LED, 1x config. ready LED.
- Power – 5V via Micro USB Connector or 5 to 12 V via external power supply.
- Dimensions – N/A
You can follow the project via its blog, and already access some tutorials on referencedesigner.com, including some YouTube videos.
An early bird pledge of $29 could get you Spartixed board and a 12V power supply, and after the first 25 pieces are gone the pledge is $34. Shipping is $6 to the US, and $20 to the rest of the world with delivery scheduled for February and March 2016. The target funding of $35,000 might however be optimistic for the type of board, as it might be challenging to get the 1,000+ boards required to achieve the goal.
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.
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Heh… An LX4 is not a lot of gate fabric to do things with. The interesting part in this space is the LX9. More entertaining is that the quantity 1K price doesn’t leave a lot of room at the perk-prices or the claimed price-point. When you’re looking at $8-11 per pop on the FPGA, the BOM/fabrication costs almost don’t fit in there. $70-80 is going to be the price point for credible FPGA work using the slightly more expensive LX9 like the Mojo, Papillo Pro, etc. use.
yep LX4 is more for glue logic
Plus I think they are at least 3-6 months to short on their delivery schedule
especially if they haven’t verified all their design yet(I2C still to verify)
and no spare time for delivery delays etc
spartan 7 is on the way (though no dates yet)
http://press.xilinx.com/2015-11-19-Xilinx-Announces-the-Spartan-7-FPGA-Family
@Al
Hi Al,
We appreciate your feedback. The I2C Bus on the Spartixed has been verified. Please check the video and tutorial on referencedesigner tutorial mentioned in the post or the kickstarter site where the updates are going to be posted.
The board is on schedule to be delivered in Feb end for the initial backers and in March of rest.
Spartan 7 is certainly promising and I promise to bring out inexpensive evaluation board as soon as it comes out.