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Message
From: Uwe Hermann<uwe@h...>
Date: Tue Feb 26 19:22:58 CET 2008
Subject: [oc] Free/Open FPGA/CPLD design?
Hi,I hope this question is not too stupid. I'm aware of many free software
(or rather free hardware) soft-cores for FPGAs on opencores.org and
elsewhere, which is a great trend.
However, is there also a free/open FPGA/CPLD design on which you can
actually _use_ the free soft-cores? I'm not really an FPGA expert
so maybe I'm missing something, but so far it looks like all the
underlying FPGAs on which people use free soft-cores are highly
proprietary and closed systems.
That's at least true as far as the hardware is concerned (layout, schematics,
chips, etc of which the FPGA consists, as well as JTAG and other
programmers etc.), and very often also the software used for programming
these things (often Windows-only, binary-only, proprietary software).
Now, my questions is: does such a thing as a free (as in Free
Hardware, i.e. VHDL/schematics/whatnot under an open license) together
with free programming hardware and free programming software (and other
tools) exist? Anybody working on such a thing? If not, what are the
major obstacles?
The ultimate goal would be to be able to build/design hardware solutions
which are _really_ 100% Free/Open, even down to the FPGA layer itself.
Thanks, Uwe.
--
http://www.hermann-uwe.de | http://www.holsham-traders.de
http://www.crazy-hacks.org | http://www.unmaintained-free-software.org
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