Show HN: Homemade 32-bit CPU and OS (2015) [video]

Re:Show HN: Homemade 32-bit CPU and OS (2015) [video] by nickpsecurity on Monday June 06, 2016 @01:52PM (#11848734)

There's whole papers in CompSci on why FPGA's aren't ASIC's and many FPGA-to-ASIC conversions failed to achieve their objectives. They really are different enough to warrant a distinction. I'd just call them bitstreams instead of software, though, given software usually gives implication of instructions a la x86 running on fixed HW. I mean, technically that's what FPGA's and bitstreams are but world of difference in meaning.

It starts getting extra muddy when we're talking anti-fuse FPGA's where it runs software exactly once then becomes hardware. ;) Still significant logical, structural, and so on differences from ASIC's or TTL designs to not consider HDL-to-FPGA to be same as making, esp manufacturing or wiring up, those.

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Re:Show HN: Homemade 32-bit CPU and OS (2015) [video] by sklogic on Monday June 06, 2016 @02:08PM (#11848876)

FPGA to an ASIC is sort of like a breadboard to a PCB. A direct translation does not make much sense for the latter as well.

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Re:Show HN: Homemade 32-bit CPU and OS (2015) [video] by nickpsecurity on Monday June 06, 2016 @02:12PM (#11848912)

Point being the structures and underlying workings of FPGA doing things vs an ASIC are really different. A person who can FPGA-prove something can't necessarily put that specific design on a 350nm node. Surely not on deep sub-micron. The FPGA won't even run by itself in the development configuration. Stand-alone FPGA boards with the stuff flashed or whatever is closer to building some hardware. It's still only a subset of skill required, though.

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