Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 34 Comments on LicheeTang Anlogic EG4S20 FPGA Board Targets RISC-V Development

LicheeTang Anlogic EG4S20 FPGA Board Targets RISC-V Development

LicheePi has already made some interested little development board in the past with products such as LicheePi Zero, and the recently-announced SD card sized LicheePi Nano board, but their  latest development board may ever be more intriguing.

LicheeTang features Anlogic EG4S20 FPGA – unrelated to Amlogic – which run a RISC-V softcore,  and all is packaged in a small small form factor as we’ve come to expect with LicheePi boards.

LicheeTang
Click to Enlarge

LicheeTang specifications:

  • FPGA – Anlogic EG4S20BG256 with 20K logic unit (LUT4/LUT5 hybrid architecture), about 130KB SRAM, 64MBit SDRAM
  • Storage – 8Mbit flash, micro SD card slot, optional SPI NOR flash
  • Expansion Connectors
    • FPC40P socket for RGB LCD, VGA adapter board, or high speed (12-bit 1MSPS) DAC module
    • FPC24P socket for DVP camera, or high speed ADC module
    • Through holes and castellated holes exposing over 130 I/Os
  • Debugging – FPGA JTAG chip connected over micro USB port
  • Misc – RGB LED
  • Power Supply – 5V via micro USB port; 3-channel DCDC power supply chip,
  • Dimensions – Small, and breadboard friendly 
RISC-V FPGA Board Pinout Diagram
Click to Enlarge

The FPGA can emulate “Hummingbird E200/E203 RISC-V core” to help people get familiar with the open source MCU. There are more details in LicheePi github account with FPGA example, and more details about the RISC-V softcore:

The Hummingbird E200 core is a two-stages pipeline based ultra-low power/area implementation, which has both performance and areas benchmark better than ARM Cortex-M0+ core, makes the Hummingbird E200 as a perfect replacement for legacy 8051 core or ARM Cortex-M cores in the IoT or other ultra-low power applications.

To boost the RISC-V popularity and to speed up the IoT development in China, we are very proud to make it open-source. It is the first open-source processor core from China mainland with industry level quality and state-of-art CPU design skills to support RISC-V instruction set.

Our ambition is to make “Hummingbird E200” become next 8051 in China, please go with us to make it happen.

The ultimate goals are to replace legacy 8051 core for better performance, and/or replace Cortex-M core for lower cost. So that promises to be interesting, and potentially not only for LicheeTang, if Hummingbird E200 gets traction, and ends up in Chinese made micro-controllers.

RISC-V FPGA Board Display

More details can be found in the official website (in Chinese), and further documents have also been uploaded in Baidu. LicheeTang is also listed in Taobao, but I’m unclear about the price since there are multiple options, and none of them are selectable on my side. One person in LicheePi Telegram group informed me the price was 89 CNY ($13).

Thanks to Iliya for the tip.

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34 Replies to “LicheeTang Anlogic EG4S20 FPGA Board Targets RISC-V Development”

  2. Aha, from: http://weifang.dzwww.com/wfxwn/201807/t20180727_16580467.htm (chinese, google translate FTW)

    “In order to meet the different IO quantity requirements of users and the requirements of PCB area, Shanghai Anlu’s EAGLE series provides the following device packages:

    　　1, EG4X20BG256, BG256 package and Spartan6 LX16 BG256 device pin compatible, users can directly transplant the design without changing the original hardware;

    　　2, EG4A20BG256, BG256 package and Cyclone4 EP4CE10 BG256 device pin compatible, users can directly transplant the design without changing the original hardware;”

    Now, if they could get a good open source toolchain and a community i can see a bright future for Anlu 😉

    Reply

      1. What use is a hard-macro when it doesn’t perform well? Don’t waste the silicon on that rubbish and hand me more CELLS… X-D

        I’m at least passingly interested in this design- it’s got some small potential to pour an even FASTER softcore in there (VexRiscv) on a budget and room to spare on cellcount. Not knocking the softcores being fielded there, but there’s better as long as there’s a GOOD Verilog/VHDL flow for the FPGA there. I’d prefer FOSS, but I’ll take “functional”.

        Reply

        2. I’d like to say that the fact somebody has actually got the product delivered doesn’t mean the producer is not (or is in fact) a scammer. I don’t have any experience with Zepan nor Lichee products, so I can not comment on this specific case. But I was scammed (you decide whether or not) by a person who successfully funded his campaign on indiegogo, made the product from the raised money and then fulfilled only a fraction of indiegogo backers. This fraction of backers got the product and were happy, wrote positive reviews and created a buzz. Then the campaigner opened a Tindie store and started to sell his production there without ever fulfilling the rest of the backers. I never got my backed product delivered, and I don’t expect it to be. If you are interested which campaign, then it was the reflowr by Mr. Lafras Henning.

          Reply

          1. > I don’t have any experience with Zepan nor Lichee products

            Me neither. I only find it confusing when people talk about Indiegogo when the product the blog post talks about is solely available through Taobao. As far as I understood backing a project is something entirely different than buying a product?

          2. >As far as I understood backing a project is something
            >entirely different than buying a product?

            From what I’ve seen it’s not. A lawyer (I think it was the guy from youtuberlaw) went over this. TL;DR; version was even if kickstarter/indiegogo campaigns seem like they should be backing something that might not turn up most campaigns are setup in a way that would seem to any reasonable person as being a preorder.
            So the expectation is that you’d get what you ordered.

            Anyhow didn’t the vega+ guys get debt collectors sent in by indiegogo because they failed to deliver?

          4. well, hello, zepan, my old buddy. wow, just wow.
            adding much insult to injury… why in god’s name do you HAVE to do that? i mean, come on, for god’s sake… do you really believe that your former backers to be a bunch of random distracted zombies…

            if you are not a scammer, they, prey tell, where are my pledges, exactly how i pledged them???
            you sent me worthless second hand crap from some old dump in china, completely unrelated to my pledges. random crap. hellooo?

            i emailed you more then a dozen time on different of your contact emails, but you always ignored me completely…. COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY. much communication skills? not really.

            it’s is quite simple really, IF i receive my freaking pledges, i’ll update my statement to reflect the real state of affairs…

            until then…

            YOU ARE A SCAMMER. PERIOD. there is NO middle ground here.

            let me break it down to you really simple, so perhaps finally you’ll get it… however much i doubt that based on experience.

            you CAN NOT scam people and simultaneously NOT be a scammer.
            choose one or the other.

            it’s that simple.

          5. Could you please provide some evidence, photos, etc, of your accusations??
            Of the “garbage” you received?

          6. hi, did u read my post upon? I can’t goto gmail as my VPN server is down last year, that’s why I can’t rcv and reply my gmail at all, I’m not mean to ignore the email. but I can see the bbs, and reply the topics on bbs.

          8. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ignored your emails because you clearly type very poorly (no capital letters, run on sentences, etc), and are extremely rude.

    2. Well, DRAT.

      I was looking forward to having another play in the space that empowers even moreso than an ESP32 or a High-Five board.

      Reply

    3. Lichee Dan (AI module), 400~800M freq, RV64GC, 1.5TB/s band width, 200~400 GOPS, in 1 Watt power consume, in $10 price, will release soon~

      Reply

    4. Hi mike, what’s ur account, let me check ur order. As some package have magnets(speaker) inside, will be possiblly reject from customhouse. and I use international express agent, he didn’t told me some package were rejected, and didn’t send those package back to me.
      As I need cross GFW to rcv my gmail email, I discard gmail last year; so, when I notice backer said package not rcved, it is this year Jan, I feel sorry for them who lost their package, and resend packages to them , but at that time I didn’t have some suit in crowd funding, I have to use other suit(more expensive) send to them, and it cost thousands dollars . Those things I have posted on bbs: http://bbs.ilichee.cc/t/track-number-update-2018-01-23/305, maybe u didn’t see it.
      in fact, there have about 20~30 package suit I didn’t finished as my busy job, but I replace it to expensiver suit in package.
      and as my poor english, I didn’t finished the english version document(but u can use google translate to see chinese version), and many of backer didn’t know how to use it and leave bad note in indiegogo.
      After this event, I know I’m unable to handle oversea express and document, so the licheepi Nano, lichee Tang, lichee AI, I didn’t release outside china, until the international agent get touch to me, they will solved those problem.
      I’m not a scam, otherwise I can’t sold thousands licheepi/tang/ai (for personal, DIYer) in china, and hundred thousand for commercial applications.
      I’m individual person in the past year, too busy and let some suit delay, and didn’t notice feedback in blocked gmail, that’s my fault. If u really didn’t rcv package, i can resend it to u.

      Reply

      1. hi Zepan, do you plan to make the Lichee Tang available for the Western market? Taobao is not that easy for us in Europe..

        Reply

        1. the bit about “expensive suit” is especially insulting, as that’s complete and utter hogwash.
          where does zepan come up with this stuff…

          the truth is, i got garbage, literally garbage, 5 (five) times in a row… sounds like a plan to me.
          how does that make ANY sense? it doesn’t.

          so then, it follows, garbage in china is more expensive than electronic parts?

          xanady, the realm of wonders, truly.
          ruled by the magnificent zepan khan, supreme lord of the imagination.

          Reply

    6. The boards are real you can buy them on aliexpress which leads me to believe that zepan is not a purposeful scammer.

      Reply

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