EasyBOB: ICE40UL1K-SWG16ITR1K development board

EasyBOB is a breakout board for Lattice's ICE40UL1K-SWG16ITR1K FPGA. This breakout board makes it easy to get started with this FPGA because it only needs 5V input power to operate; EasyBOB provides all the necessary FPGA power rails with correct power sequencing for you! The 5V power can be supplied by the host board, the programming hardware (such as FT232H BOB), or both simultaneously. If you plan to use FT232H BOB for programming, then EasyBOB provides a simple, direct connection between them using 0.1" pitch header pins.

The ICE40UL1K-SWG16ITR1K from Lattice is one of the tiniest FPGAs you can buy. However, it is so small it can be very difficult to work with during development:

• The 16 pin WLCSP package requires multilayer PCBs with 0.1m laser drilled microvias to access the inner pins, and such services aren't offered affordably through prototype PCB shops (or they aren't offered at all by some shops)
• Even for PCB shops that offer the capability, the advanced processing required for such a small portion of the PCB will unnecessarily drive up the cost of your entire development boards
• Lattice does not offer a development board for this specific FPGA in this package.
• Lattice development boards for similar products (like the 36 pin version of ICE40UL1K) currently cost over $100 each, which makes it difficult to test committing designs to the non-volatile memory.
  
• The Lattice development boards for similar products are impractically large in proportion to the size of the FPGA.
• If you want to iteratively test using the one-time, non-volatile programming features of the FPGA, EasyBOB makes the FPGA easily replaceable.

Please note that the SPI Master/Slave jumper can usually be ignored; during programming the programming hardware (like FT232H BOB) provides the correct signaling for master/slave, but the ability to jumper them is provided in case you need it for more interesting programming methods.

If you want a board with just the FPGA broken out to 0.1" pitch pins, please see SimpleBOB instead.

Contact sales@designercircuits.com for bulk pricing.

Product ships from DFW, Texas, USA