Why would five FPGA companies fail in a row to make FPGA chips that also worked with their promised open source FPGA toolchains?
STM Electronics in 2005: “We want to create and release a open source FPGA toolchain and a FPGA chip.”
Result: Nothing.
QuickLogic in 2023: “QuickLogic eFPGA Hard IP is supported by two versions of its FPGA User Tools; Aurora, which is comprised of 100% Open-Source components that give designers complete transparency and inspectability, …” And the proprietary version.
Result: Nothing but patches sent by QuickLogic to open source reverse engineering projects which could get shutdown at any time if those projects cause companies to lose money from people who would have otherwise bought their proprietary toolchains for thousands of dollars.
Maybe the open source QuickLogic FPGA toolchain could work one day… F4PGA doesn’t support them but they support Xilinx?
RapidSilicon in 2022: “Lets make a FPGA chip and a open source toolchain.“
Result: Website fails to load, no chips you can buy. Open Source Toolchain is on GitHub.
ClearFPGA: “Let’s have our buyers buy our open source eFPGA with a RiscV core inside.”
Result: Out of stock as soon as I wanted to buy one. Still unavailable for order.
ZeroAsic: “Let’s make a open source FPGA toolchain for our Platypus eFPGA cores.”
Result: They only allow Platypus eFPGA cores only as IP for commercial agreements, not an actual commercially available chip you can buy.
No wonder no one wants to, say, invest in my libre hardware FPGA Architecture, available as a subproject under my umbrella project, https://github.com/VitaMixofNutrients/VitaOS-Libre. I don’t have a toolchain for my VitaFPGA Architecture, but I explained it (VitaFPGAArchLogicBlock.v) in detail in a Description file, and its permissively licensed.
I’m thinking of a company name for me to pick for my LLC. I decided to close my previous Outfox Semiconductor LLC, because Microsoft Outlook exists. Vita is a generic word for Life in Latin that is very common and so can’t be patented, trademarked or copyrighted. My name has Vita in it. (I’m Vitalii Skikun) So I’ll use it for my FPGA Architecture name since no FPGA Architecture has that word in it, but I’m still unsure about my LLC name, given that there are plenty of companies with Vita in their name.
People watched and saw how five companies bailed when it came time to release the source code of their FPGA toolchains and manufacture FPGA chips that were compatible with their free software toolchains, even when five companies promised they’d do so. Five in a row.
Basically, it seems like no company can both have a free software toolchain and manufacture FPGA chips compatible with their free software toolchains. Either one or the other.
And the only practical ones, the reverse engineering projects, could get legally shut down any minute they begin lowering proprietary FPGA toolchain profits.
