UncleOxidant 4 days ago

You can apparently use the open source yosys/nxtpnr tools with the tang nano 9k, but, unless something has changed recently, nxtpnr doesn't work with the 20K yet. However, I found the Gowin tools to work reasonably well (and definitely way less bloated than the Xilinx & Altera tools.)

addaon 5 days ago

At a higher price point but with more capability, Digilent has a one-week 20% sale on their FPGA boards this week. Some good options (Artix 7 and Spartan 7) within spitting distance of $100.

  • UncleOxidant 4 days ago

    From what it looks like (Xilinx parts primarily) if I bought one of these boards I'd be stuck using either Altera or Xilinx tools. I think some spartan 7s work with yosys/nxtpnr, but not sure how well.

    • addaon 4 days ago

      Yep. The Xilinx tools are very, very good; but they're definitely proprietary.

      • UncleOxidant 3 days ago

        > The Xilinx tools are very, very good

        Ummm... no, that has not been my experience at all. I'd replace 'good' with 'buggy' in that sentence. And also very, very bloated - like 90GB bloated. I've had good experiences using yosys/nxtpnr/SymbiFlow, but that's kind of limited to the Lattice ICE40, ECP5 families and Quicklogic.