SimpleBOB: ICE40UL1K-SWG16ITR1K development board (DIPSY-inspired)

SimpleBOB is a breakout board for Lattice's ICE40UL1K-SWG16ITR1K FPGA. This breakout board offers unfettered access to the FPGA because it very simply routes all the FPGA pins to more convenient, hand-solderable 0.1" pitch thru holes. Power sequencing and voltage levels are left entirely up to the host design.

The only assumptions this board makes about wiring up the FPGA are:

• GND and GND_LED are tied together on the board as specified by the datasheet, such that only 15 thru holes are available instead of 16
  
• VCC, VCCIO, and VPP_2V5 power rails have 0.1uF decoupling capacitors included
  

If you are looking for a break out board that offers the convenience of properly-sequenced power supplies driven by 5V input power, please refer to the EasyBOB instead.

If you found this board by searching for a DIPSY, then yes, this board was inspired by DIPSY. It cannot be produced at the cost DIPSY was advertised to be, but then again, DIPSY itself was never produced for that price (or produced at all, it would seem). That said, the FPGA itself is still very small and very affordable for use in designs intended for high-volume production, but as with many other prototyping boards, the cost is necessarily higher due to lower sales volumes combined with the high-density manufacturing methods required.

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, SimpleBOB makes the FPGA easily replaceable.

SimpleBOB makes it easy and affordable to work directly with the ICE40UL1K FPGA. When used with headers and sockets, you can develop and test using the non-volatile configuration memory (NVCM) and still replace the FPGA if needed for iterative development.

Contact sales@designercircuits with bulk pricing inquiries.