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Soft Core (synthesis)
A soft core (also called softcore) is a digital circuit that can be wholly implemented using logic synthesis. It can be implemented via different semiconductor devices containing programmable logic (e.g., ASIC, FPGA, CPLD), including both high-end and commodity variations. Many soft cores may be implemented in one FPGA. In those multi-core systems, rarely used resources can be shared between all the cores. Examples of soft core implementations are soft microprocessors, graphics chips like AGA or Open Graphics Project, harddisc controllers etc. See also * SoC (System-on-a-chip) * PSoC (Programmable System on a Chip) * FPGA (Field-programmable gate array) * Reconfigurable computing * Minimig - Example implementation of custom chips replications * Open-source hardware * List of open source hardware projects This is a list of open-source hardware projects, including computer systems and components, cameras, radio, telephony, science education, machines and tools, robotics, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Digital Electronics
Digital electronics is a field of electronics involving the study of digital signals and the engineering of devices that use or produce them. It deals with the relationship between Binary number, binary inputs and outputs by passing electrical signals through Logic gate, logical gates, Resistor, resistors, Capacitor, capacitors, Amplifier, amplifiers, and other Electronic component, electrical components. The field of digital electronics is in contrast to analog electronics which work primarily with analog signals (signals with varying degrees of intensity as opposed to on/off two state binary signals). Despite the name, digital electronics designs include important analog design considerations. Large assemblies of logic gates, used to represent more complex ideas, are often packaged into integrated circuits. Complex devices may have simple electronic representations of Boolean logic#Digital electronic circuit design, Boolean logic functions. History The binary number system was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Open Graphics Project
The Open Graphics Project (OGP) was founded with the goal to design an open-source hardware / open architecture and standard for graphics cards, primarily targeting free software / open-source operating systems. The project created a reprogrammable development and prototyping board and had aimed to eventually produce a full-featured and competitive end-user graphics card. OGD1 The project's first product was a PCI graphics card dubbed OGD1, which used a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Although the card did not have the same level of performance or functionality as graphics cards on the market at the time, it was intended to be useful as a tool for prototyping the project's first application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) board, as well as for other professionals needing programmable graphics cards or FPGA-based prototyping boards. It was also hoped that this prototype would attract enough interest to gain some profit and attract investors for the next card, si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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List Of Open Source Hardware Projects
This is a list of open-source hardware projects, including computer systems and components, cameras, radio, telephony, science education, machines and tools, robotics, renewable energy, home automation, medical and biotech, automotive, prototyping, test equipment, and musical instruments. Communications Amateur radio * D-STAR#Home-brew D-STAR radio, Homebrew D-STAR Radio * HackRF One Audio electronics * Monome 40h – reconfigurable grid of 64 backlit buttons, used via USB; a limited batch of 500 was produced; all design process, specifications, firmware, and PCB schematics are available online * Neuros Technology#Neuros digital audio computer, Neuros Digital Audio Computer – portable digital audio player * Arduinome * MIDIbox – modular DIY hardware–software platform for MIDI devices including controllers, synthesizers, sequencers Telephony * Openmoko – phone framework (first use case: First International Computer (FIC) Neo FreeRunner, released as of mid-2008 * Open ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Open-source Hardware
Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifact (software development), artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source#Society, open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as free and open-source hardware (FOSH), meaning that the design is easily available ("open") and that it can be used, modified and shared freely ("free"). The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker culture, maker movement. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, circuit diagram, schematics, bills of material, printed circuit board, PCB layout data, hardware description language, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data), in addition to the software that device driver, drives the hardware, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Minimig
Minimig (a portmanteau of ''Mini Amiga'') is an open source re-implementation of an Amiga 500 using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Minimig started around January 2005 as a proof of concept by Dutch electrical engineer Dennis van Weeren. He intended Minimig as the answer to the ongoing discussions within the Amiga community on implementing the Amiga custom chipset using an FPGA. The project's source code and schematics were released under version 3 of the GNU General Public Licence on 25 July 2007. Original prototype The original Minimig prototype is based on the Xilinx Spartan-3 Starter Kit, the Original Amiga Chipset is synthesized in the FPGA. Two printed circuit boards are attached via the FPGA kit expansion ports. The first one holds a 3.3V Motorola 68000-type CPU. The second has a MultiMediaCard slot with a small PIC microcontroller acting as a disc controller that supports the FAT16 filesystem and does on-the-fly Amiga disk file (ADF) decoding. VGA- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Reconfigurable Computing
Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with flexible hardware platforms like FPGA, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). The principal difference when compared to using ordinary microprocessors is the ability to add custom computational blocks using FPGAs. On the other hand, the main difference from custom hardware, i.e. application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) is the possibility to adapt the hardware during runtime by "loading" a new circuit on the reconfigurable fabric, thus providing new computational blocks without the need to Semiconductor device fabrication, manufacture and add new Integrated circuit, chips to the existing system. History The concept of reconfigurable computing has existed since the 1960s, when Gerald Estrin's paper proposed the concept of a computer made of a standard processor and an array of "reconfigurable" hardware. The main process ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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System-on-a-chip
A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and data storage control functions, along with optional features like a graphics processing unit (GPU), Wi-Fi connectivity, and radio frequency processing. This high level of integration minimizes the need for separate, discrete components, thereby enhancing power efficiency and simplifying device design. High-performance SoCs are often paired with dedicated memory, such as LPDDR, and flash storage chips, such as eUFS or eMMC, which may be stacked directly on top of the SoC in a package-on-package (PoP) configuration or placed nearby on the motherboard. Some SoCs also operate alongside specialized chips, such as cellular modems. Fundamentally, SoCs integrate one or more processor cores with critical peripherals. This comprehensive integrat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture
Amiga Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) is the third-generation Amiga graphic chipset, first used in the Amiga 4000 in 1992. Before release AGA was codenamed Pandora by Commodore International. AGA was originally called AA for Advanced Architecture in the United States. The name was later changed to AGA for the European market to reflect that it largely improved the graphical subsystem, and to avoid trademark issues. AGA is able to display graphics modes with a depth of up to s per pixel. This allows for in indexed display modes and (18-bit) in Hold-And-Modify (HAM-8) modes. The palette for the AGA chipset has 256 entries from (24-bit), whereas previous chipsets, the Original Chip Set (OCS) and Enhanced Chip Set (ECS), only allow out of 4096 or 64 colors in Amiga Extra Half-Brite (EHB mode). Other features added to AGA over ECS are super-hi-res smooth scrolling and 32-bit fast page memory fetches to supply the graphics data bandwidth for 8 bitplane graphics modes and wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Logic Synthesis
In computer engineering, logic synthesis is a process by which an abstract specification of desired circuit behavior, typically at register transfer level (RTL), is turned into a design implementation in terms of logic gates, typically by a computer program called a ''synthesis tool''. Common examples of this process include synthesis of designs specified in hardware description languages, including VHDL and Verilog. Some synthesis tools generate bitstreams for programmable logic devices such as PALs or FPGAs, while others target the creation of ASICs. Logic synthesis is one step in circuit design in the electronic design automation, the others are place and route and verification and validation. History The roots of logic synthesis can be traced to the treatment of logic by George Boole (1815 to 1864), in what is now termed Boolean algebra. In 1938, Claude Shannon showed that the two-valued Boolean algebra can describe the operation of switching circuits. In the early d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Soft Microprocessor
A soft microprocessor (also called softcore microprocessor or a soft processor) is a microprocessor core that can be wholly implemented using logic synthesis. It can be implemented via different semiconductor devices containing programmable logic (e.g., Field-programmable gate array, FPGA, Complex programmable logic device, CPLD), including both high-end and commodity variations. Most systems, if they use a soft processor at all, only use a single soft processor. However, a few designers tile as many soft cores onto an FPGA as will fit. In those multi-core systems, rarely used resources can be shared between all the cores in a cluster. While many people put exactly one soft microprocessor on a FPGA, a sufficiently large FPGA can hold two or more soft microprocessors, resulting in a multi-core processor. The number of soft processors on a single FPGA is limited only by the size of the FPGA. Some people have put dozens or hundreds of soft microprocessors on a single FPGA. This is o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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Multi-core
A multi-core processor (MCP) is a microprocessor on a single integrated circuit (IC) with two or more separate central processing units (CPUs), called ''cores'' to emphasize their multiplicity (for example, ''dual-core'' or ''quad-core''). Each core reads and executes program instructions, specifically ordinary CPU instructions (such as add, move data, and branch). However, the MCP can run instructions on separate cores at the same time, increasing overall speed for programs that support multithreading or other parallel computing techniques. Manufacturers typically integrate the cores onto a single IC die, known as a ''chip multiprocessor'' (CMP), or onto multiple dies in a single chip package. As of 2024, the microprocessors used in almost all new personal computers are multi-core. A multi-core processor implements multiprocessing in a single physical package. Designers may couple cores in a multi-core device tightly or loosely. For example, cores may or may not share c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |