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iCESugar-pro

iCESugar-pro

iCESugar-pro is a FPGA development board based on Lattice LFE5U-25F-6BG256C, which is fully supported by the open source toolchain (yosys & nextpnr), the board is designed in DDR2 SODIMM form factor with 106 usable IOs, with on-board 32MB SDRAM, it can run RISC-V Linux. The on-board iCELink debugger (base on ARM Mbed DAPLink) supports drag-and-drop programming, you can just drag the FPGA bitstream into the virtual disk to program, and with a additional USB CDC serial port direct connect to FPGA, so you can only use one Type C cable to develop and test.

<div align=center> <img src="https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar-pro/blob/master/doc/iCESugar-pro-1.jpg" width = "700" alt="" align=center /> <img src="https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar-pro/blob/master/doc/iCESugar-pro-2.jpg" width = "700" alt="" align=center /> <img src="https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar-pro/blob/master/doc/iCESugar-pro-3.jpg" width = "700" alt="" align=center /> </div>

Hardware

ECP5

LFE5U-25F-6BG256C (BGA256 0.8mm pitch)

  1. LUTs: 24K
  2. sysMEM Blocks: 18Kb x 56
  3. Embedded Memory: 1008Kb
  4. Distributed RAM bits: 194Kb
  5. 18 x 18 Multipliers: 28
  6. PLL x 1

SDRAM

SDRAM uses IS42S16160B (32MB)

SPI-Flash

SPI Flash uses W25Q256JV (32MB)

Clock

A 25MHz crystal is connect to P6

Peripheral

  1. a RGB LED is connected to {A11, A12, B11}
  2. a SDCARD slot, support SPI/SDIO
  3. 106 usable IOs out with SODIMM-DDR2-200P, broken out with the ext-board.

JTAG

The native JTAG of ECP5 is connect to the on-board iCELink, you can flash bitstream with this JTAG interface (called JTAG1). There is also another JTAG interface (actually, just some GPIOs of ECP5) connected to the iCELink too (called JTAG2), if you design a SoC with a JTAG interface support, then you can use the JTAG2 to debug your SoC. Only one JTAG works at once. So use the icesprog tool with command icesprog -j 1 or 2 to switch between these two JTAG interface.

$icesprog -j 1
JTAG --> [JTAG-1]
         [JTAG-1]
         TCK:  iCELink-PB6  -- ECP5-JTAG-TCK (25F-BG256-T10)
         TMS:  iCELink-PB4  -- ECP5-JTAG-TMS (25F-BG256-T11)
         TDI:  iCELink-PB5  -- ECP5-JTAG-TDI (25F-BG256-R11)
         TDO:  iCELink-PB3  -- ECP5-JTAG-TDO (25F-BG256-M10)

         [JTAG-2]
         TCK:  iCELink-PA14 -- ECP5-IO-PL8D  (25F-BG256-F5)
         TMS:  iCELink-PA13 -- ECP5-IO-PL17A (25F-BG256-H5)
         TDI:  iCELink-PA0  -- ECP5-IO-PL38A (25F-BG256-N4)
         TDO:  iCELink-PA1  -- ECP5-IO-PL17D (25F-BG256-J5)

done

iCELink

iCESugar-pro has a on-board debugger named iCELink (base on APM32F1)，only needing one USB wire to program the FPGA and debug it:

  1. Drag and drop programming, just drop the bitstream into the virtual USB drive named iCELink then wait a few seconds while the iCELink firmware programs it for you.
  2. USB CDC serial port, it can use to communicate with FPGA
  3. 2 JTAG interfaces for flashing the ECP5 or debugging your SoC on ECP5
  4. use the command tool icesprog to flash or do more config, here is the help info
$icesprog -h
usage: /home/pi/oss/icesugar/tools/icesprog.arm [OPTION] [FILE]
             -w | --write                   write spi-flash or gpio
             -r | --read                    read  spi-flash or gpio
             -e | --erase                   erase spi-flash
             -p | --probe                   probe spi-flash
             -o | --offset                  spi-flash offset
             -l | --len                     len of write/read
             -g | --gpio                    icelink gpio write/read
             -m | --mode                    icelink gpio mode
             -j | --jtag-sel                jtag interface select (1 or 2)
             -c | --clk-sel                 clk source select (1 to 4)
             -h | --help                    display help info

             -- version 1.1a --

Tips

cause the iCELink connect some GPIOs to the ECP5, you can control this GPIOs with icesprog to do some self defined behavior, for example, to control the iCELink-PA14 -- ECP5-F5 line out low, type these command.

$icesprog -g PA14 -m out
$icesprog -g PA14 -w 0

How To Program

There are multiple ways to program the bitstream.

  1. Drag and drop programming, this is the fastest and simplest way to flash.
  2. Using the command icesprog xxx.bit, this can provide more configable parameters.
  3. Using the command dapprog xxx.bit (program to flash) or dapprog xxx.svf (program to SRAM)
    the icesprog binary and source code is in icesugar repo, and the dapprog is a bash wrapper of openocd command, click here to check how to setup.

Virtual machine image

link：https://pan.baidu.com/s/1vV2ckFpOuyd600Y47Tl1sw
verify code：i3en
user: ubuntu
passwd: ubuntu

The env include yosys, nextpnr, icestorm, gcc, sbt.

How to setup enviroment

Linux

It is reccomended that you use the virtual machine image, it simple and convenient.
Alternatively, you can download the toolchain for programming the FPGA unit by following the instructions in the "Installing Toolkits" section below and the RISC-V compiler for running your code has a tutorial linked in the "Other tools" section.

Windows

If you don't want to use the virtual machine image you need to use the Windows Subsystem For Linux 2 (WSL2) as not all components of the toolchain has native windows versions.
Install WSL using this tutorial. By default it uses ubuntu, which this section is written for. Once WSL is installed and configured you can open it by searching for 'WSL' from the start menu.
Once in the WSL desktop you will need to preform the following commands to install the needed toolkits.

Installing Toolkits (Windows and Linux)

The easiest way to get all needed tools is using the YosysHQ oss-cad-suite. All you need to do is download and extract the repository to a location on your machine such as the home folder. After you extract it you'll need to update your PATH variable so your terminal can use the programs.
Do this by editing your .bashrc file on your home folder using sudo nano .bashrc from there. Scrolll to the end of the file and in a new line add export PATH="$PATH:/home/YOUR_ACCOUNT_NAME_HERE/oss-cad-suite/bin"

Other tools

Dapprog is included in the tools folder and can be executed from there. ecpprog is included in the install for nextpnr and the RISC-V gcc toolchain used for code compilation can be installed using this tutorial

Building demo files

If you want to use the demo files as is you just need to program the bitstream provided in the demo folder.

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If you want to change how the demos behave you will need to rebuild them. For the blink, hdmi and uart tests you just need to run make in the same folder to update them with your changes. For the litex_linux demo you will need to have the litex repository downloaded locally and will need to modify the top.ys file where it lists INSTALL_DIR with the location you put the repo.

How to buy

You can buy iCESugar-pro and PMOD peripherals from our offcial aliexpress shop Muse Lab Factory Store or search iCESugar-Pro FPGA on aliexpress.com

Copyright Statement

The HDMI test verilog source code is from github.com/DoctorWkt/ULX3S-Blinky
The Litex on Linux project is from github.com/litex-hub/linux-on-litex-vexriscv
For hobby and personal usage, you are free to use the iCESugar-pro, you can also make the board yourself using the documentation & firmware in this repo.
For the commercial usage, if you get iCESugar-pro Board from our official shop and use in other commercial product, that's no problem, otherwise, please contact us in advance.

Reference

Colorlight-FPGA-Projects

https://github.com/wuxx/Colorlight-FPGA-Projects

icestorm toolchain

http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

riscv gcc toolchain

https://xpack.github.io/riscv-none-embed-gcc/install/ https://www.sifive.com/software

iCESugar

https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar

iCESugar-nano

https://github.com/wuxx/icesugar-nano

Examples

https://github.com/damdoy/ice40_ultraplus_examples
https://github.com/icebreaker-fpga/icebreaker-examples

SpinalHDL

https://spinalhdl.github.io/SpinalDoc-RTD/SpinalHDL/Getting%20Started/index.html