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Also worth checking out James’s simplified version designed for the Lattice iCE40 [1][2].

[1] https://www.excamera.com/sphinx/article-j1a-swapforth.html

[2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=rdLgLCIDSk0



Will the non-simplified J1 fit/run in a larger iCE40 FPGA?


Probably not.

iCE40 FPGAs come with up to 7,680 logic cells.

The J1 was designed for a board with a Xilinx XC3S1000, which has 17,280 logic cells.


There are RISC-V cores that fit in about 1k luts. One could build a NoC of RISC-V using an XCS1000.


This is probably because the RAM is internal to the FPGA:

> A complete J1 with 16Kbytes of RAM fits easily on a small Xilinx FPGA.

I'd guess the CPU itself would easily fit into an iCE40 (given that RISC-Vs are fitting and the J1 should be simpler) with the RAM external. Several of the iCE40 boards have external RAMs


Even the iCE UP5K has a whopping internal 1Mb RAM.


Oh, thanks so much for this pointer :)




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