Social and educational potential of FPGA design for the masses
This post is a summary written by Marco Fioretti, excerpted from his longer post here
Making custom integrated circuits at home or school that are more
powerful and much more flexible than the popular Open Source [Arduino
www.arduino.cc] platform is still a relatively unknown concept. This
activity, however, is not just much more affordable and easy today
than just a few years ago thanks to FPGAs: it may also have important
social and educational consequences.
[Arduino www.arduino.cc] is a system for building interactive
microcomputers that include, or can be connected to, physical sensors
to monitor the surrounding environment and/or control other physical
devices like lights, motors, and other physical outputs. **Field
Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs)** are digital integrated circuits in
which the connections between all internal transistors, that is the
actual functionality of that circuit (modem, CPU, graphic engine,
encryption device, router or anything else) are created after it has
been soldered on a printed board. This is a huge difference with
respect to platforms like Arduino: no matter how much one can
customize it, Arduino remains a board built around one fixed
microprocessor. An FPGA instead, depending on how its transistors are
connected every time it’s turned up, could be almost anything and
(with some models) also run embedded versions of Linux.
===Status of FPGA development platforms===
Today, many circuit boards built around low to medium complexity FPGAs
are available starting from 150/200 USD, or can be manufactured on
demand by several vendors. With the right knowledge it is possible to
transform any of these boards in a completely custom computer at home
or in the classroom.
This has huge social implications, because what can be made with FPGAs
isn’t just products that are only relevant and useful for rich people
in first world cities. FPGAs can be the basis for “mass customization”
of many small and economical but advanced microelectronic products
very useful in all fields of science, education and manufacturing,
from hydroponic control systems to home-made robots. FPGAs may control
solar panels or be educational platforms similar to the XO
minicomputers of the One Laptop Per Child project.
At the educational level, teaching to design also FPGAs passes the
message that everybody can contribute to design, if not build from
scratch, even the most complex and more critical parts that make our
society work. It’s the next logical step, and much more empowering,
after Free Software: “don’t just create software for computers, create
the computer themselves”. This is why it’s important to create proper
educational resources, interest and motivation to use FPGAs.
