Hey guys. So, I have been working on designing a very simple CPU as a basic simple project for fun. Well, not simple but.. anywho, I was wondering if its in any way possible to have it put on to an actual chip. Not an FPGA but its own custom chip. I am just wondering if it is possible to do for a price that is ... well.. not a lot.. In the hundreds... Any more than a few hundred and i'm out of luck. If I can't have my own chip then I suppose I may settle with an FPGA but I would have to learn how to use FPGA's and get one.
This is exactly what FPGAs are for. Rolling your own custom chip would cost a lot of money, and I don't even think chip houses would do it for orders of less than, say, a hundred thousand devices.
Just strip off the Altera/Xilinx/Lattice branding.
Okay. In that case, Ill use an FPGA if I ever actually make the CPU.
There was a mention on The Amp Hour podcast a few episodes ago about a company taking your designs and making actual chips out of them.. but all i remember was something about taking 4-8 months to actually have the chip in your hands.
Go to
http://www.theamphour.com/ and read the episode summaries for the last 10-20 episodes or thereabouts if you're interested, sorry I don't know more accurately.
No, it's not possible to do your own chip for that price.
FPGA's are:
- Massively cheaper
- Instant (don't have to wait many months)
- Infinitely reprogrammable
- Easier to use (that's saying a lot) and get help with.
FPGA are designed specifically for what you want to do, use them.
Okay, and can anyone recommend me a fairly cheap (hundred dollar or so?) fpga kit that has everything I need to program it and get things working? Thanks.
Just as a reality check, once you have designed your chip as a silicon entity ($$$ cost), there is a 'photographic' process - overlays etching etc to create the final silicon. Others with real world experience can put their 2 cents worth in here, but the cost of just the photographic 'plates' would be quite a few more times more expensive than the average house and that is before you start the fabrication process.
Okay, now I see why you are saying its not possible in my price range
Okay, and can anyone recommend me a fairly cheap (hundred dollar or so?) fpga kit that has everything I need to program it and get things working? Thanks.
XuLA board. Comes with a nice tutorial for beginners and only 55USD.
Terasic DE0 Nano. That has fairly big Altera Cyclone IV E. You can fit whole SoC with OpenRISC running Linux on it.
Or, if your design is small, have a look at MachXO and MachXO2 breakout boards from Lattice.
These are extremely cheap yet good way to learn VHDL/Verilog.
For Xilinx you may look for some Spartan 6 boards like the one from Avnet.
