Anyone know of best, really cheap FPGA development boards

[untitiled_swan]

There is a nice list here: https://www.joelw.id.au/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards

Anyone have any experience with any of those in the link above / know of any others that aren't listed ? Thanks

[zapta]

Most of the boards on the Apio list are low cost https://fpgawars.github.io/apio/docs/supported-boards/ . Also the Sipeed Tang Nano 20k is notably missing from your list.

As for tools, I would add Apio which is a single install and easy to use suite with the open source tools (yosys, nextpnr, and more).

[kicktostart]

While it's not the cheapest compared to other options, the PolarFire FPGA from Microchip adds another low-power option to the list.

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/microchip-technology/MPFS-DISCO-KIT/22194301

I've used a lot of the Zynq boards you mentioned. I found them great for bringing-up devices with non-standard electrical interfaces.

Also, early in my career I prototyped with the MachXO2 breakout. It was a cheap board (at least back in 2013 when it was $20) with I/O that were length matched for LVDS. It was quite useful.

Question: What is your application? If you provide a bit more info, I might be able to provide more helpful response.

[Doctorandus_P]

Boards starting at EUR 16.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/FPGA/iCE40/

And apart from the price of a development board, for me it would be more important that the ICE40 has an open source development chain.

https://hackaday.com/tag/ice40/

[dobsonr741]

EBAZ4205. Zynq will give you both end of the FPGA world. Dirt cheap on Ali.

[untitiled_swan]

Wow.. a Zynq board for ~$30... amazing.. they must of purchased the FPGA at serious quantities, at least (from memory) the Zynq FPGA IC alone is around the $100 mark for single quantities ? Seems a bit too good to be true..

i.e. Trenz has cheapest Zynq + RAM SOM for around the $110 USD mark..

I don't mind Ali, although they seem to try to fool you sometimes with what you're actually buying.. i.e. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005919123170.html initially it seems like the product is $11 ish, but that is just the 'Adapter Plate' - and the image is of the development board :S

[RoGeorge]

This site https://www.fpga4fun.com/SiteInformation.html links to https://www.knjn.com/ShopBoards_Pluto.html (where the cheapest is an EP1K10 for $9.95).

Working with an FPGA is very different and rather difficult (when compared with microcontrollers) so I recommend starting with the cheapest/simplest possible FPGA board.  Then, if after the first steps you still want more FPGAs, buy a bigger board with more peripherals, or build your own board, depending of the application.


Another source of cheap FPGA boards are discontinued/scrap boards you may find.  For example, my first FPGA devboard was a discarded display from an office laser printer:  https://www.eevblog.com/forum/fpga/the-blair-witch-story-of-my-first-fpga-devboard-made-from-a-printer-front-panel/msg5628069/#msg5628069

Other scrap boards example, you may find on Aliexpress discontinued crypto miner boards, they can be $5..15 and fully equipped with a Zynq + RAM, but you won't find much didactic material for them.


Yet another FPGA starter can be to buy something else with an FPGA inside, for example some tool you would like to have anyway in your lab.  Pick something that is open source, and use that (temporary) as an FPGA learning platform.  For example, buy an ADALM-PLUTO (SDR learning platform with a Zynq inside) https://www.analog.com/en/resources/evaluation-hardware-and-software/evaluation-boards-kits/adalm-pluto.html , or maybe buy a logic analyzer with an FPGA inside https://www.dreamsourcelab.com/product/dslogic-series/

This way you don't waste/lock $100-300 with a devboard never to be of any use (in case you don't like FPGAs).

[ftg]

...
Other scrap boards example, you may find on Aliexpress discontinued crypto miner boards, they can be $5..15 and fully equipped with a Zynq + RAM, but you won't find much didactic material for them.
...

The EBAZ4205 boards have been around for a while, so they have decent documentation, including schematics and guides.
https://github.com/xjtuecho/EBAZ4205
https://www.codeembedded.com/blog/fpga_zero_to_hero_vol_5/
https://hackaday.io/project/187351-ebaz4205-fpga-development-environment/details

Sad to see the price being over double of what it used to be.
I paid 13eur for mine, including shipping.

[abeyer]

Wow.. a Zynq board for ~$30... amazing.. they must of purchased the FPGA at serious quantities, at least (from memory) the Zynq FPGA IC alone is around the $100 mark for single quantities ? Seems a bit too good to be true..

Those are all scrap from old bitcoin mining rigs... someone paid $$$ for them, used them for a bit, and then junked them when they needed to jump to the next generation hardware to keep up the hash rate.

[dobsonr741]

Brought up both the EBAZ4205 and Antminer S9 controller boards I recently picked up on AliExpress. Happy to report both worked right out of the box.

The EBAZ came up with its original mining firmware, Web UI was accessible, Ethernet worked, and the serial console showed a clean Linux boot with the FPGA image loading successfully.

The S9 controller board was equally uneventful—in the best possible way. NAND boot worked, FPGA configured during FSBL, Linux came up, Ethernet acquired DHCP, and I was able to get into both the Web UI and SSH.

Always a bit of a gamble buying surplus mining hardware, but in this case both boards turned out to be healthy and fully functional. Definitely happy with the deal.

[dobsonr741]

Couldn’t be happier! I finally populated the previously empty microSD slot, and now my EBAZ4205 is running PYNQ.

That means I can use Jupyter notebooks directly in my browser, served from the board itself, while interacting with the FPGA fabric. PYNQ also loads the FPGA bitstream automatically, so no more JTAG cable for everyday development.

How awesome is that?