“I am developing a strange habit - I keep “twisting” products from failed companies… into nice toys.
For science! :-)
After completing my AtomicPI saga, something else caught my attention - a very cheap FPGA board, that came out of yet another failed company - the Pano Logic G2,
Why not compile an open-source CPU inside this FPGA?
And in fact, since this FPGA is quite big, why not make it a multi-core one?
And then compile and run programs inside it - with an open-source cross-compiler, that uses an open-source real-time OS? The same OS that most European satellites and their instruments are using?
Why not, indeed!
(he said, a month ago - and dove into the abyss).
How fast could it go? And since the Pano Logic was meant to be a thin client, and comes with VGA, USB, Ethernet… it’s packing all the pieces necessary to create a standalone computer! Could it be that this can be made into a fully open-source computer?
Keep reading - I believe you’ll learn a thing or two.
P.S. The material is heavily technical and long, so I’ll try to lighten it up here and there, with the occasional rant / funny picture. Also, please remember that I am a software developer, not a HW one; I simply enjoy fooling around with technology like this, so take everything said in this blog post - and in the referenced repos - with a grain of salt.”