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<rah>
I possibly have the opportunity to acquire an FPGA board for free as my employers are possibly getting rid of them; available are Cyclone III, Stratix IV, Stratix V and Arria 10 boards; I'm wondering which would be most likely to be supported by free software in the future?
<rah>
it seems Intel has done away with the free/lite versions of the software in order to program any of them so as I understand it, they'd actually be useless without dropping thousands of dollars on a software license which I'm not going to do
<Sarayan>
I *think* the arria10 is the only non-obsolete one in there
<Sarayan>
also, honestly, open source support is not going to happen without people having the boards, and iirc they're kind of expensive
<Sarayan>
wife would maim me if I put $4K in a fpga board
<tnt>
I wouldn't put any money for any of them.
<tnt>
AFAICT the only Altera/Intel device being worked on are Cyclone 5.
<tnt>
Given the time frame of other projects for other fpga families, you're probably looking at years before any of the above would reach a level of maturity where you could live without the official toolchain.
<tnt>
If you want to play with FPGA -> Get yourself an ice40 or ecp5 board. If you want to develop toolchains for FPGA -> Get yourself a Arty S7, a Crosslink NX, a Gowin, or a Cyclone V board. Those are not mature, but at least they're started and other people are already working on them.
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<rah>
I'm happy waiting for years :-)
<rah>
perhaps I could loan a board so someone more capable of reverse engineering it
<rah>
which raises perhaps a better question: which chip would be most useful for reverse engineering?
<Sarayan>
tnt: iirc cyclone 10gx and arria 10 are mostly the same thing and are not far from cyclone v in practice
<Sarayan>
still, it's silly money :-)
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<rah>
tnt: I want to take advantage of the possible availability of a free FPGA board, rather than seeking to play with FPGAs by spending money on an ice40 or ecp5 board
<tnt>
"free" is always relative ... it'd cost you time.
<rah>
so would spending money on an ice40 or ecp5 board
<tnt>
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ As I said, depend what your goal is ... it'll take thousands of hours of work to get those FPGA to be supported to the level ecp5/ice40 are today.
<Sarayan>
a little less than that given how far we are with the cyclonev and the fact that a lot is in common
<tnt>
What's missing for support is not a free board ... you can find boards on ali for a tiny fraction of the value of the engineering hours it'll take to support them.
<Sarayan>
tnt: arria10 boards?
<Sarayan>
I have no experience of aliexpress I must say
<tnt>
mm, quick search shows some for like 1.5k
<Sarayan>
which still doesn't pass the wife-test :-)
<tnt>
That's nothing compared to the work needed to get a toolchain for it.
<tnt>
You think if you got it for free your wife would be happy if you spent every single bit of free time working on it ? (I mean, I don't know your wife, maybe she would ...)
<Sarayan>
Given I've written 95%+ of mistral.... :-)
<Sarayan>
(and she brought me the mister fpga ;-)
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<tnt>
Also don't forget that (1) the higher end the fpga, the smaller the user-base is. (2) also the higher end the fpga, the more feature complete you need the toolchain to be to be worth it, supporting all its advanced features, or you wouldn't get such a high end fpga to begin with.
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<Sarayan>
That's very true
<tnt>
But hey, if you're that much into it, go ahead, get a board from rah and work on arria10, that's none of my business. Just pointing out that from what I've seen, what prevents most FPGA toolchain projects to progress is not boards, it's time of people willing to work on the toolchain.
<Sarayan>
the de10-nano makes the cyclonev usable at a sane price point, bigger fpgas than that one have no hobbyist user-base
<tnt>
Yeah, IMHO it makes more sense to spend time completing / advancing the state of toolchain of "hobby grade" FPGAs than having embryonic support for super large FPGA that no-one will buy.
<rah>
tnt: you're presuming that I'm going to do the reverse engineering work; I can benefit from a free FPGA board by sticking it in a cupboard for 10 years and waiting until it gains toolchain support
<Sarayan>
it's indirectly boards, as in it's not in the hands of people to hack on for the fun of it
<tnt>
Sarayan: That's not what I observed. For small FPGA you can get board for liek 10$ ... how many people actively work on gowin support ? It's not in the 100s ...
<Sarayan>
you can't do anything worth shit with small fpgas dev boards
<tnt>
rah: except it's not going to happen. No-one is going to add support for an obsolete FPGA you can't buy anymore 10 years from now.
<rah>
regardless, it looks like actually there's still cost-free support for Stratix V and IV and Cyclone III so if I can get hold of one of those I will; if I can also get hold of any Arria 10 boards I will and send them to interested parties
<rah>
tnt: you don't know that
<rah>
really my question was: which board is most likely to emerge from my cupboard in 10 years with toolchain support?
<rah>
sounds like actually it's the Arria 10
<tnt>
rah: Of course not, if I could predict the future 100%, I wouldn't be here, I'd be on a beach sipping mojito. But I can make an educated guess based on what's being worked on now.
<rah>
tnt: so can I
<tnt>
Heh, you're the one that asked for other people opinions, I'm just giving it, do with it what you will ...
<rah>
I'm not here seeking advice on *whether* any free FPGA board in my cupboard will emerge in 10 years' time with free toolchain support but *which* of the options available is *most likely* to emerge with free toolchain support#
<tnt>
whatever
<Sarayan>
rah: most probable is arria 10, but the probability is damn low
<rah>
sure, it's a shot in the dark
<rah>
but then they're free so it's not much of a loss, except cupboard space
<rah>
regardless, Arria 10, thank you :-)
<Sarayan>
cyclone 3, stratis 4 are obsolete, nobody is going to care about them unless paid for that (and I don't see happening)
<Sarayan>
stratix v I'm not sure, but by the time boards are inexpensive it will be obsolete
<rah>
good work on Mistral while I'm at it :-)
<rah>
aye, the cyclone and stratix boards I understand are (even more) unlikely to be supported by a free toolchain but it seems they can still be used with a proprietary toolchain, in contradiction to what I first thought, so I could still play with them at least
<gatecat>
> stratix v I'm not sure, but by the time boards are inexpensive it will be obsolete
<gatecat>
fwiw there are already cheap microsoft boards with stratix v on ebay (and more rarely the arria 10 ones too)
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<cr1901>
Sarayan: But would your wife... MAME yo- *pulled offstage by a hook*
<tpb>
Title: Microsoft HP Azure X930613-001 861309-001 FPGA Dual-Port 40GbE PCIe x16 Adapter | eBay (at www.ebay.co.uk)
<gatecat>
so far only stratix v and arria 10 ones have popped up on ebay, although I've seen references to stratix 10 ones existing at least as prototypes too
<cr1901>
Something tells me that if one decided to RE those chips even w/ a legit paid license, the project would get shut down
<gatecat>
idk, fpga vendors don't generally consider licensing costs a massive revenue stream
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