More hardware from Enclustra GmbH for open-source projects
Published:
Just a short update this time, in anticipation of more interesting ones coming soon. You have seen us write a lot about Enclustra’s Zynq module for quite some time now, but we don’t like to be so one-tracked or to suggest that the Zynq is the only great product coming from our Swiss partner.
For those who would like to integrate an FPGA into their design and at the same time want some CPU processing (but perhaps not feature a dual-core Cortex-A9 on board), the OpenRISC processor running on a pure FPGA board from Enclustra like the Mars MX2 might just do the trick. While OpenRISC is an open source project aimed at portability, you probably know that there is always some extra work involved in making things go together well, so some time ago we decided to actually run OpenRISC on the platform and open-source the effects of our work.
Now Enclustra is kind enough to provide us with more hardware to make it possible for us and our partners to perform our work faster, which means more results and tutorials viable for open-sourcing, sooner.
Enclustra’s FPGA and SoC module offering is very interesting in the sense that they provide a commercially supported platform that is easily integrable using a popular socket, SO-DIMM, which in turn is used also in many other of our and our partner’s designs.
It is interesting to observe how the worlds of FPGA and embedded are coming closer, not only in the sense of technology but business-to-business cooperation, through the use of softcores and the recent rise of FPGA+CPU SoCs.
Where do you think this direction will take us? We hope that to a more open world, where related technologies are used and understood by a broad range of engineers literate in not just one particular workflow.
UPDATE: And there it is, a package straight from Switzerland:
