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Comment by payne92 | Hacker News Reader

The historical impediment to broader FPGA adoption has always been their proprietary nature.

Until vendors are willing to release bitstream details enabling open source tools and an vibrant ecosystem, applications will be limited.

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I'm all for open toolchains, but I don't think this is the primary reason for FPGAs lack of broader appeal. I think the lack of open toolchains and the lack of broad appeal both stem from FPGA vendors almost exclusive focus on high margin, high-end applications. There doesn't seem to be much push to focus on larger markets with lower margins.

That said, Lattice has recently started to push into these new areas, but they haven't been that successful. If they start to see more success, I think we will see open toolchains. Lattice also has the advantage of being able to lean on the open toolchain work done by people like Clifford Wolf [1]

[1] http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

I've heard people say the open source ICE open source tool chain is less painful to work with.

It is!

It doesn't beat the commercial tools in area / performance right now, but dear god its so much more pleasant to work with!

True. Plus Clifford is an awesome guy:)

You are wrong about focusing on the high end FPGA. There are plenty of FPGA's for low-level stuff. For example, one project I was involved in used FPGA for debouncing completed with the programming interface for ADSP-21xx. They replaced a dozen of different chips with one FPGA.

You touch the main point.

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