Vicharak Begins Vaaman "Reconfigurable Edge Computer" Production, Unveils Periplex Programming Tool

Indian programmable computing specialist Vicharak is preparing to launch its "reconfigurable edge computer," the Vaaman, despite having failed to reach its crowdfunding goal — and hopes to rekindle interest in the device with a better explanation of its capabilities and support for a new hardware peripheral definition language based on JSON: Periplex.

"We work on projects and deliver results — some may take years, others just months — but it always comes down to how people perceive their usefulness. We've spent countless hours designing, prototyping, and building Vaaman, and perhaps we haven’t yet found the right way to communicate its true potential to the community," says Vicharak's Akshar Vastarpara of the project. "There’s certainly been a disconnect in how we’ve conveyed Vaaman’s capabilities, and we're working on improving that every single day. In this industry, you identify a problem and solve it using your skills — whether that involves hardware or software."

Vicharak unveiled the Vaaman back in 2023, later launching a crowdfunding campaign for a device it claimed was more than a simple FPGA development board but a "reconfigurable edge computer." While the campaign generated interest, it failed to gather enough orders to reach its funding goal — but the company is going ahead with production anyway. "We've consulted with Crowd Supply," Vastarpara explains, "and decided to reduce our target and move toward campaign closure. We already have some internal funds available to produce the initial batch, so we’re fully committed to delivering all current orders despite the reduced funding total."

For the future, Vicharak is going to focus on differentiating the device from rival FPGA development boards — partly through the introduction of a supporting ecosystem, including a FPGA-based accelerator for machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads dubbed Gati, and partly though the introduction of a new way to program the board: Periplex.

"Periplex eliminates [traditional] barriers with a revolutionary approach: hardware peripherals defined through simple JSON," Vastarpara explains. "With Periplex, implementing six UARTs, four SPI interfaces, and two I2C buses takes minutes instead of months. No EDA [Electronic Design Automation] tools, no Verilog knowledge, no hardware description languages — just straightforward JSON configuration. What would take six months with traditional development flows takes just 2-3 minutes with Periplex."

While Periplex may be easier than traditional HDLs, it's also considerably more limited: it only allows the user to select from existing peripheral definitions, which at the time of writing were limited to UART, I2C, SPI, I2S, pulse-width modulation (PWM), general-purpose input/output (GPIO), WS2812B addressable LEDs, and One-Wire. "We're committed to expanding the library to cover the full spectrum of embedded system requirements," Vastarpara says. "For example, I2C, USB 2.0, pand[ JTAG are upcoming peripherals."

More information on Periplex is available on the Vicharak website; the Vaaman board is still available to order through Crowd Supply for $212, with hardware expected to ship in late July.