The Lattice iCE40 FPGAs are pretty nice, a good starting point for people getting into FPGAs, and I have to say, the open-source community-developed toolchain is by *far* the best way to do so.
Great interview and great guest! Jim seems like such a cool guy. Down to earth, approachable & driven. Wish him all the best at lattice and wherever he ends up in future.
Just about to sit down and watch this, I hope there is some chat about the open source toolchains for iCE40 and ECP5 Edit: no :( but still a pretty good chat
Never played with FPGAs but I have been following the open source toolchain for lattice devices and some of the boards available and very tempted to have a go. Would love to hear more about the open source side.
OT: I'm curious on your view on the numbers of Tesla's DOJO specs. Would you consider doing a video on that, or are you going to write an article on it?
Amazing interview. Jim relay loves his work, cool to see how excited he gets about exploring new parts of the industry. That experience from working over such a diverse subject range must relay help bring new ideas to each subject. Iteration on top of Iteration is what moves the world forward and when you can see how other disciplines have solved problems it accelerates development! Big thanks for sharing.
I wish the interview could have talked about SymbiFlow an yosys (the open source EDA tool and bitstream synthesiser). Maybe I missed? Those are the real pusher behind new users (especially in academia and OSS community) adopting Lattice's chips. No longer devs have to work with crappy expensive vendor tools. Instead they could use yosys that is a lot more lightweight and more robust (in terms of integration with UNIX tools).
>Those are the real pusher behind the adoption of Lattice's chips Got any figures on that? While I think the opensource thing is important I doubt it's pushing significant amounts of sales for them.
I'd love to believe it but this is wishful thinking. Think about it. There's a lattice FPGA in every iPhone, the open-source tools are a drop in the bucket.
In our university. A lot of project that uses lattice is because the people behind them uses yosys and hates Vivado. (Sample size ~15). Maybe that's just in academia?
Maybe Jim will see this but just wanted to say I miss him at AMD. Was a really good presenter in my opinion. And seemed like he was a good team member for the AMD resurgence. (Ryzen & Radeon Customer perspective).
Definitely. I think anyone that's ever built test instruments can extol the virtues of FPGAs lol. It's surprising it's taken this long for FPGAs to make it in to regular computing.
It helps that more mainstream devices like the OSSC which can do absurdly powerful things like upscale 240p retro games to 1200p are showing people what they're capable of.
Blackmagic Design puts FPGAs in their cameras and switchers. I can see them put them in other hardware products as well. What are the drawbacks compared to a custom processor or software?
My potato chips must be of a thin and light variety. I’m not sure if you’d compare to the 2nm or the 5nm, I’d say 5! On to FPGA and programming design Dr David Johansen, is a friend of mine. In fact, his wife and I dated, before she was his wife! Maybe you know of him or not, but interesting subject.
I have absolutely zero idea wtf they are talking about but i tried to follow along because i own a bit of lattice stock. however, after this interview i feel even more dumb.
I'm pretty sure that's the idea behind them (them being the Lattice MachXO3 series.) Of course people find fault injection attacks now and then so it's not a guarantee. Just tougher than the rest of the board.
![[11] Mike Clark, AMD Zen Chief Architect](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3vyNzgOP5yw/mqdefault.jpg)
![[11] Mike Clark, AMD Zen Chief Architect](/img/tr.png)
![[6] Ljubisa Bajic and Jim Keller, Tenstorrent](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sMvudTBBQNw/mqdefault.jpg)
The Lattice iCE40 FPGAs are pretty nice, a good starting point for people getting into FPGAs, and I have to say, the open-source community-developed toolchain is by *far* the best way to do so.
Great interview and great guest! Jim seems like such a cool guy. Down to earth, approachable & driven. Wish him all the best at lattice and wherever he ends up in future.
Just about to sit down and watch this, I hope there is some chat about the open source toolchains for iCE40 and ECP5
Edit: no :( but still a pretty good chat
Yeah, I was wishing for that too. Oh well.
Nice interview, was good to get these really elaborate answers. Helped a lot to get a better sense of what usecases are, where the problems lie, etc.
Never played with FPGAs but I have been following the open source toolchain for lattice devices and some of the boards available and very tempted to have a go. Would love to hear more about the open source side.
OT: I'm curious on your view on the numbers of Tesla's DOJO specs. Would you consider doing a video on that, or are you going to write an article on it?
Amazing interview.
Jim relay loves his work, cool to see how excited he gets about exploring new parts of the industry. That experience from working over such a diverse subject range must relay help bring new ideas to each subject.
Iteration on top of Iteration is what moves the world forward and when you can see how other disciplines have solved problems it accelerates development!
Big thanks for sharing.
Really appreciate this one, thanks ian
I wish the interview could have talked about SymbiFlow an yosys (the open source EDA tool and bitstream synthesiser). Maybe I missed? Those are the real pusher behind new users (especially in academia and OSS community) adopting Lattice's chips. No longer devs have to work with crappy expensive vendor tools. Instead they could use yosys that is a lot more lightweight and more robust (in terms of integration with UNIX tools).
It was the main reason that I was interested in this interview. I am also a bit disappointed.
>Those are the real pusher behind the adoption of Lattice's chips
Got any figures on that? While I think the opensource thing is important I doubt it's pushing significant amounts of sales for them.
I'd love to believe it but this is wishful thinking. Think about it. There's a lattice FPGA in every iPhone, the open-source tools are a drop in the bucket.
I also would love to hear about it
In our university. A lot of project that uses lattice is because the people behind them uses yosys and hates Vivado. (Sample size ~15).
Maybe that's just in academia?
Maybe Jim will see this but just wanted to say I miss him at AMD. Was a really good presenter in my opinion. And seemed like he was a good team member for the AMD resurgence. (Ryzen & Radeon Customer perspective).
Ian could you slow down a bit? So much quality content you put out I still have to catch up!
jk keep up the good work
Nice interview! Interesting to hear about servers are using these sorts of FPGAs, wasn't aware of that use case.
Excellent series-really enjoy these.
FPGA recognition on the rise for sure
Definitely. I think anyone that's ever built test instruments can extol the virtues of FPGAs lol. It's surprising it's taken this long for FPGAs to make it in to regular computing.
It helps that more mainstream devices like the OSSC which can do absurdly powerful things like upscale 240p retro games to 1200p are showing people what they're capable of.
great interview!
the best part: "you have made this that i can not hold a job"
When I saw the title I thought it was about semiconductor lattices.
It wasn't, but not disappointed.
fabulous
Blackmagic Design puts FPGAs in their cameras and switchers. I can see them put them in other hardware products as well.
What are the drawbacks compared to a custom processor or software?
This is super interesting
My HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus has a Lattice IC - i think it's part of their iLO (OOB management).
I love Lattice, I am using their FPGAs now. Great products.
achronix its under your radar non-amd(xilinx) ,intel(altera) high power fpga ?
My potato chips must be of a thin and light variety. I’m not sure if you’d compare to the 2nm or the 5nm, I’d say 5! On to FPGA and programming design Dr David Johansen, is a friend of mine. In fact, his wife and I dated, before she was his wife! Maybe you know of him or not, but interesting subject.
I have absolutely zero idea wtf they are talking about but i tried to follow along because i own a bit of lattice stock. however, after this interview i feel even more dumb.
If you own stock you must understand their product, right?
audio sync problem anyone?
yeah it's pretty bad...
It's good for me? Sometimes it takes time for youtube to correct itself. Or it depends on the resolution being played
Sometimes the TH-cam app has a couple deseconds de-sync that doesn't fix itself. It's on their end, not mine.
I get it on other channels also, on my phone. Sometimes I have to restart and it's fine. Not an issue on PC though.
Field programmable security chip is insanity unless they physically disable reprogramming.
Eh, you could make the same point about NAND Flash by that logic.
I'm pretty sure that's the idea behind them (them being the Lattice MachXO3 series.) Of course people find fault injection attacks now and then so it's not a guarantee. Just tougher than the rest of the board.