As a computer science guy who interlops in computer engineering i really want to find time to build something cool like this and tapeout. The retro architectures for rendering are simple but fun! I love the project
I recommend getting started like the author did: simulation first, then FPGA. Honestly FPGA will take you very far. I always get a kick out of being able to design my own SoC. "Hmmm I need 9 separate I2C ports... Ok, copy block, paste paste paste..." Or if you have an operation in software that's taking forever you can write an accelerator for it
Do you know if there are any tutorials that use bounded model checking tools from the very get go? For verilog or VHDL.
What are the best modern tools to get started with in simulation for those who have never dabbled before?
Try <a href="https://8bitworkshop.com/verilog" rel="nofollow">https://8bitworkshop.com/verilog</a> to get started with dabbling
I do the vast majority of my work on xilinx and it's easiest to just use the built in simulator. It's free and supports vhdl and verilog. Most support just one. For lattice and microchip work I use what the tool provides which is usually a cut down modelsim or something
The other commentator mentioned Verilator (which is indispensable in larger designs) but you may also want to grab Icarus Verilog too. It's a FOSS simulator and, unlike Verilator, is 2-bit and so it handles X ("don't care") and Z ("high impedance") signals. It's ridiculously slow compared to Verilator but the greater fidelity can be valuable depending on what you're trying to do.
start here: <a href="https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/YosysHQ/oss-cad-suite-build</a>
Verilator is very good. It's faster than anything else, and it is free. The downsides are it won't stimulate encrypted IP blocks. And it doesn't do mixed language sim, so vhdl is no bueno.
Are there any open or at least standard FPGAs that the open source community flock to? Last time I looked into FPGAs, it was mostly closed architecture and proprietary tools
Not for anything mid to higher range, but I believe there's open source tooling for some of the older Lattice and Xilinx parts. I would say for me it's not as big a deal as on the software side, because each vendor's hardware tends to be pretty different from each other anyway.
It’s amazing and wonderful to see the Internet support these tiny cliques of interest. Having everybody connected leads to homogenization of culture in some ways, but it also supports these couple dozen (?) people around the world finding each other for this amazing little competition.
<p><pre><code> Having everybody connected leads to homogenization of culture in some ways
</code></pre>
The internet may hypothetically homogenize culture relative to a society that does not have any kind of mass communication at all, but relative to the world it was actually introduced into, the internet has completely balkanised the culture. Prior to the internet, we had television, cinema, literature, radio, and newspapers, which were all centralised and controlled enough that they created a shared monoculture in nations. A signifant portion of a country's population would watch, read, and listen to the same media. The internet bucked that trend, allowing all kinds of new subcultures to pop up and to more easily cross national boundaries.
Then algorithms optimized content for addictiveness and we’re in a world where a large part of the world looks at the same set of „influencers“.
Yeah, back in the day you would go to school the next day after a show that everyone watches released its new episode, it aired on the prime-time slot on the primary TV channel, and you'd discuss what happened in that episode, or have some references or new jokes. Created a common culture.
I was curious about the long-term stability of the cited HAKMEM sin/cos generator. I found an overview here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3111501">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3111501</a> (EDIT: I'm still not sure about stability, apparently it is stable in exact arithmetic under certain conditions.) Coincidentally it is related to the Verlet integration video I posted last week: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253592">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253592</a>
I like how the grid pulses with the kick drum. Nice touch.
Wow, nice work!! Coming from demo/intro coding where you have memory and a driver for audio(x86), this is very impressing.
Reminds me of college: "Hardware and Software are logically equivalent"
Writing hardware is like writing software except parallelism is way cheaper, but mistakes are way more expensive.
Whoever said that was mistaken... or worked at Intel. lol =3<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability</a><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_domain_crossing" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_domain_crossing</a>
I'm tempted to put together an FPAA with Tiny Tapeout, but it likely won't fit in the allocated area.
Check the switching speed specification, and shared i/o bank configuration.<p>The project has a narrow scope of use-cases. =3
TT allows you to pay more and build multi-block designs
Very impressive stuff. I used to frequent the JS demoscene, mostly dwitter - but this is on a whole other level.<p>Oh shit, this prompted me to check and turns out TinyTapeout is back to life! <a href="https://tinytapeout.com/" rel="nofollow">https://tinytapeout.com/</a>
Really cool!
No x, no y, just Z is a pattern so often used by chatGPT it has started to bleed into common usage by people who maybe aren't even using an LLM.
Or maybe ChatGPT picked it up from common usage.
Language is fluid. This is ok.<p>There are many bad things about LLMs, but a benign shift in popular language usage isn't one of them.
> There are many bad things about LLMs, but a benign shift in popular language usage isn't one of them.<p>Organic shifts in language are fine. What is <i>not</i> fine is Big Money (which most forms of AI are) manipulating society at large - and that's not just the AI companies' doing. Think of Tiktok leading people to say "unalive" instead of the various clear words before (e.g. kill, murder, executed, run over by car, mauled to death by animal).
I disagree. It's a sign of what is essentially cultural contamination by an LLM. There is something vaguely gross about it, like when people start repeating advertising slogans. It's a sign that someone spent enough money that they directly rewired our brains.
Do you get grossed out when you step on a linoleum floor? Or you ride an escalator? Or drink out of a thermos?<p>Culture contaminates.
> like when people start repeating advertising slogans<p>but without the craft of a good advertising slogan. So worse!
when i was running for 5th grade class president a number of decades ago, my campaign sign slogan was a "no x, no y, just z" snowclone.
Reminds me of the time we repaired old pinball machines in trade school. Good times.
Wow, I'm looking at current "Open Shuttles", a license to use 4KB of SRAM in the project is $2500. But it comes with Wishbone Bus interface!<p>> 1024x32 Commercial SRAM
> CF_SRAM_1024x32
> Commercial SRAM: 1024 words x > 32 bits (4KB) with Wishbone Bus interface
> Area: 0.17mm²
> GPIOs: 0
> License: Commercial - $2500 per project
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If you have registers, it's not "no memory".
If you have flip flops, it's not "no memory".<p>If you have a ROM, it's not "no memory".<p>Needlessly pedantic!<p>I thought this was pretty cool but the first video didn't play. All this write up and I really just want to see the damn demo in action first! (Edit: reloaded the page and it worked. I still would like to see it on rela hardware!)
Ah that's what I get for self hosting. What browser?<p><a href="https://youtu.be/7xPS-0nydms" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/7xPS-0nydms</a>
I don't know. Analog signal processing is clearly less memory than a register, no? So a line exists somewhere and I think it's way before no RAM.
> Analog signal processing is clearly less memory than a register, no?<p>You are going to have a hard time doing analog signal processing with memoryless elements. In the linear domain all you can do is apply gain and mix signals together. If you work with memoryless nonlinearities you can do waveshaping, which is generally only useful when applied to special signals (e.g. sine waves).<p>Any time you want to do frequency-dependent behavior (filtering, oscillation) you need energy storing elements, usually capacitors, sometimes inductors. A capacitor is just like a register: it stores charge, similarly, inductors store energy in the magnetic field. Needless to say these devices are not memoryless. In fact, since the quantity that they remember is a continuous variable, they store a lot of information.
> Analog signal processing is clearly less memory than a register, no?<p>Bucket-brigade delay lines?
><i>Needlessly pedantic!</i><p>if you have pedantry, it's also not "no memory"
And I better not see any capacitors on there remembering any charge!
Even simple wires can be memory: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory#Electric_delay_lines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory#Electric_del...</a>
><i>Pure Silicon Demo Coding: No CPU, No Memory, Just 4k Gates</i><p>ok, but silicon is doped so it's slightly impure, and CPUs are also silicon and memory is also silicon.<p>you actually meant "4K gates, no clock, no synchronization, no timing" and maybe a little "not exactly sure when the output is rea... is rea... is ready"