Status: r0.1 assembled and working, HyperRAM and SD card testing TODO.
Designed in Kicad nightly.
Ensure you clone --recursive and checkout the "nightly" branch of josh-kicad-lib.
ECP5 Mini is a Lattice ECP5 FPGA in the Black Mesa Labs "S7 Mini" form factor.
- Lattice ECP5-12/25F FPGA in a caBGA256 package.
- 32 / 64 3V3 IO on 2.54mm / 1.27mm pitch grid.
- 64 Mbit HyperRAM DRAM (3V3 / 100 MHz only).
- USB Full Speed (12Mbit) connection to FPGA over Type-C connector.
- MicroSD card support (on back of board).
- 8 Multiplexed RGB LEDs.
- Designed to work with OSHPark's 4 layer service.
r0.1 hardware has been assembled with no major issues being found at time of writing. Requires more validation, particularly the HyperRAM, microSD, and signal integrity of IO.
USB dfu bootloader courtesy of tnt is working.
Example gateware can be found here, however please note I built this board to force myself to write more HDL so it's probably full of bad practices.
Check the issues #1 for any errata / improvements to the design.
After getting over my fears of BGA after assembling a Glasgow recently, I decided the next logical step was to design a BGA into a board of my own. An ECP5 was the obvious choice to follow on from my iCE40-feather designed last year as it steps up the resources and available IO. There are also a growing number of open ECP5 dev boards and projects that I have / can learn from during the hardware and gateware development.
Not only was this project inspired by the growing number of OSHW FPGA designs, but I referenced a number of them during the hardware development. A huge thank you needs to be given to these people as otherwise my design would likely have even more bugs...
- Black Mesa Lab's S7 Mini for the form factor and feature set inspiration.
- Greg Davil and his OrangeCrab and Butterstick development boards.
- Matt Venn's Basic ECP5 design.
- SpriteTM / Hackaday's 2019 Supercon Badge.
- Luke Valenty's TinyFPGA-EX.
- 1BitSquared's HyperRAM PMOD for symbol and footprint.
- ECP5 Symbol from xesscorp's Kicad Schematic Symbol Library.