Lattice Semiconductor Launches "Community Sourced" Portal to Show Open FPGA Hardware Some Love

Lattice Semiconductor has shown its support for the open hardware community by showcasing FPGA development kits, boards, and reference designs on its official website in a new portal dubbed "Community Sourced."

"In addition to proprietary boards developed by Lattice and other partners there is a broad array of boards developed by the open source community. In some cases just the designs are available and in other cases there are sources available for purchasing assembled boards," the company explains. "For your convenience we list some of the more popular and interesting Community Sourced boards on the Lattice website. Lattice does not evaluate or certify community sourced boards so you will want to make your own assessment as to fitness for your application."

The portal showcases a range of community-designed boards, all built around Lattice's own field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) — including the newly-launched OrangeCrab, which crowdfunded through the Hackster Launch platform and GroupGets. Other boards showcased include the TinyFPGA Bx, iCEBreaker, Alhambra II, ULX3S, and ultra-compact Fomu — a design from Sutajio Kosagi which fits entirely within a USB port.

At the same time, Lattice is also highlighting community projects it describes as "reference designs" — including the myStorm BlackIce-II, Dadamachines' Doppler, Matthew Venn's Basic ECP5 Dev Board, and the unusual earring-shaped iCE Bling from Electronut Labs.

Each showcased project includes either a dedicated page on Lattice's portal highlighting the key features and providing links for more information, or links out directly to a project home page or source repository. Links are also provided, where available, to places where finished board designs can be purchased.

The Community Sourced portal is now live on the Lattice Semiconductor website. A link is also provided to submit boards not currently listed for inclusion on the portal.