Entrepreneurial

Imagine for a minute that you wake up one day and you realize that you have a superpower — like the ability to fly. Well, that’s a bit like how I felt when I started using Claude Code about a month ago. Since then, when I talk and write about my experiences with this amazing new tool, I find myself trying to hold back my excitement, trying not to look like a crazy person. It’s like I feel the ground shaking beneath my feet while I see other people around me going about their lives as usual. I would tell people that this is huge, that it has flipped the tables on my work and the whole tech industry — but I’d see that they were not as shocked as I was. Claude Code was blowing my mind. The truth is that it has completely changed the way I work, at least when it comes to one big part of my work, and I struggle to imagine ever going back.

In 2008 I started the FPGA Developer blog on the Blogger platform (remember the .blogspot domains?). Then in 2011 I moved the blog to Wordpress. I’ve got to say that over the last 9 years Wordpress has been great and let me create a good looking blog without needing to know much about coding for websites. I was pretty quick to get onto the Divi theme by Elegant Themes and I thought it was the best thing in the world. Then gradually over the last few years, that all changed.

Here’s a short introduction to our 96B Quad Ethernet Mezzanine. For more information, see the documentation at docs.ethernet96.com and if you want to buy the product, go to the order page here.

Update 2019-06-10: This product is now available to purchase! Read the documentation here, and get it from the order page here.

Over the last few months I’ve been really busy working on a new product and I just want to take a step back today and share some of it. Let me start with what it is and then I’ll tell you about how and why I did it.

The product

A 4-port Gigabit Ethernet mezzanine card designed for Avnet’s Ultra96 Zynq Ultrascale+ single board computer.

Orders can now be placed for the FPGA Drive products on the Opsero website. Both the PCIe and FMC versions allow you to connect an M.2 PCIe solid-state drive to an FPGA development board and both can be purchased at the same price of $249 USD (solid-state drive not included).

The PCIe version has an 8-lane PCIe edge connector for interfacing with the PCIe blade (aka. goldfingers) of an FPGA development board. The board is powered by 12VDC so it comes with a power cable which allows you to power the FPGA Drive from the same power adapter that supplies power to the FPGA board.

Update 2018-05-03: You can now buy a basic M.2 NGFF loopback module from Opsero

Half the fun of making cool stuff is sharing it with others. The photos I’m sharing in this post are of my new M.2 NGFF loopback module - it’s a M.2 form-factor module with a loopback on each of the 4 PCIe lanes, as well as some electronics to test other connections such as the 3.3V power supply and the 100MHz clock. It allows my assembler to test the FPGA Drive boards that come out of production. The other half of the test jig is of course the FPGA board, which I’ve designed to be driven by the PicoZed 7015 (I’ll share photos of this board in a later post).

Here’s a first look at the FMC version of the FPGA Drive product, featured with the Samsung VNAND 950 Pro SSD. The FMC version can carry M-keyed M.2 modules for PCI Express and is designed to support up to 4-lanes. It has a HPC FMC connector which can be used on a LPC FMC carrier for a single-lane connection to the SSD, or a HPC FMC carrier to exploit the maximum throughput of a 4-lane connection. The FMC also has a 100MHz clock generator for PCIe applications, which provides a reference clock to the SSD and to the FPGA.

Announcing that the Robust Ethernet FMC is now in stock and available for purchase. Checkout the flashy new images of the first units, ravaging Ethernet packets in this tough new form factor.

Here are the first images of my new product: the Robust Ethernet FMC.

This new variation of the Ethernet FMC contains all the features of the standard version but has been designed to fit the 10mm height profile of the Vita 57.1 standard. The Robust Ethernet FMC is perfect for the more rugged gigabit Ethernet applications, and here’s why:

• 4 x 10mm stand-offs positioned to fit the mounting holes of the Vita 57.1 standard
• Separated RJ45 and magnetics with filtering on every coil for greater isolation and protection
• LEDs don’t cross the isolation barrier for maximum ESD protection

Contact me if you’d like more information on this product or others.

Today I’m excited to announce that the first Ethernet FMCs were shipped! I would like to say thanks to all those who pre-ordered the Ethernet FMC, thanks for your patience and confidence and I hope the product enables you to develop new and exciting technologies in the networking space.

I’ve had an insanely busy last few weeks trying to organize the production of the boards, testing the boards, as well as working out the packaging, labeling and shipping materials. All the work in getting the product to a complete and clean-cut state has been much more time-consuming than I had ever imagined, but the learning experience was worth the effort many times over.