New Low Cost Lattice FPGA Kits

For $19 you can buy a high performance or low power iCE40 family evaluation kit with free iCEcube2 development tool support.

The iCEblink40-HX1K Evaluation Kit is the high-performance platform with a iCE40HX1K FPGA.  The board is USB powered and programmable.  An onboard Atmel 90USB162 8-bit microcontroller allows two-way communication with the FPGA.

The iCEblink40-LP1K Evaluation Kit is contains a low-power and small footprint iCE40LP1K FPGA.  It also contains the Atmel 90USB162 for communication.

Both iCEblink40 kits feature 1280 tables, on-chip RAM, 1Mbit SPI flash and capacitive buttons.  The low price lasts until October 31, 2012.

Lattice is also reducing the price of the MachXO2 Pico Development Kit to $29 until the end of the year.  This kit allows you to test popular serial interfaces using the LatticeMico8 open, free 8-bit soft microcontroller, it also features a segmented LCD, 4 capacitive buttons, SPI Flash, I2C temperature sensor and power measurement.

New TI ARM Starter Kit Includes Display

Texas Instruments' new AM335x Starter Kit is now available for $199 featuring a 720MHz AM3358 ARM processor, 4.3 inch touch-screen/LCD, and dual-gigabit Ethernet with integrated switch.  This processor is in the same family as the Beaglebone's AM3359, so it should be easy to port software that is available for that popular platform.  TI already has Linux and Android software development kits for the 3.x kernel and ice cream sandwich respectively.  Here is a list of features from the starter kit's product page:

• AM3358, 720Mhz
• 256MB DDR3
• 4.3” Touch screen LCD
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet Ports with integrated switch
• WiFi WL1271 with Wifi Direct Support’
• Bluetooth®
• USB-UART
• USB-XDS100 emulator
• Android navigation buttons
• User configured LEDs
• Audio Out

UPDATE: There is now an AM335x Starter Kit Page on the Texas Instruments Wiki  for developers with software and development tool downloads and design files.

You can purchase from the TI e-store, Avnet, DigiKey or Mouser, all have it in stock at the time of writing.  The part number is TMDSSK3358.

Introducing the Sitara AM335x Starter Kit