nice little FPGA

It's more complicated than that.

The US encouraged the Shah. to stage a coup against the democratically elected Mosaddegh back in 1953

Since the long term consequence was turn Iran into a theocratic state, it wasn't a great idea

Weapons export is rarely - if ever - the only motivation.

Zelensky was the star of a satirical TV series before he was elected president, but he's rather more than just a clown. Trump's own performance a "business man" on the TV show "The Apprentice" was closer to the clown model - Zelensky wrote and directed his show as well as acting in it. Trump was just dropped into an established role to be his egocentric self.

Trump isn't anybody's slave. He's clever and manipulative, but ignorant, and mainly interested in looking impressive to his audience. This doesn't lead him to make wise choices. His lunatic scheme to put tariffs onto imports into the US has now been declared illegal, and with any luck this will lead to him being impeached and ejected from the White House.

Or declaring himself a dictator and abolishing the legal system (or at least, attempting to).

The US is descending into lawlessness. Trump is actually allowing citizens to pray in public.

Promoters almost always attempt to capitalize on popluar buzzwords. It goes without saying and is unworthy of further comment. The acronym AI mostly means "Advanced Inquiry" to me these days. AI mitigates manifestation of marketer's HTML2 hype in my search results.

You ask for an example. It's a sad commentary on contemporary civilization how Zone 5 Technologies and CoAspire may both blow up a bunch of $70,000.00 SoCs every day, either intentionally or accidentally, without a second thought. Perhaps you seek a more personal example? Bless you for asking me about it! For it's fun to talk about such things. One of my projects is to virtualize standalone lab instruments. My prototype, admittedly in the early stages, is similar to an ADALM2000. For the time being, LabApp lends itself as a label for my project. A $70,000.00 SoC's obviously overkill for LabApp. Here's a ring sensor for LabApp based upon DiodeGoneWild's design:

Back in the day, some found the device characteristic tables the most valuable part of THE ART OF ELECTRONICS. LabApp's AI ought to be able to acquire such useful empirical data over time in order to present it in a similar manner.

In the end, there may be a role for a cheap CPLD cluster in LabApp's ring sensor. As perhaps a programmatic polypropylene capacitor value swapper.

Given the number of PICs I've destroyed by programming and wiring mistakes, I'd be terrified to go near this thing.

What in God's name is the use-case?

Sylvia.

The religious right has been protecting that right for decades now. Trump has about a much religion as an alley cat, but he does suck up to the religious right, and they fall for it.

The religious right would presumably get antsy if people were praying to the wrong god, and Trump wouldn't have a clue about that, but praying itself is multi-denominational.

Probably finance, bitcoin mining and AI, all the technology abuses currently in vogue.

Jeoren Belleman

Something expensive, like radar probably.

Nowadays, one just digitizes whatever comes out of a few receive antennas and figures out the world. Some of the adc chips cost multi-kilobucks too.

Imagine the pcb layouts!

In a recent project I was involved with for a radar signal processor we used $30k Xilinx FPGAs.

The analog and ADC components for automotive radars at 77GHz are now only a few tens of dollars each from TI, Analog Devices and others. Multiple of these devices are typically used each outputting multiple streams of gigabit/s data over LVDS or MIPI/CSI.

The data is then processed in the FPGA to create multiple virtual radar beams (192 in our case) that undergoes the usual multi-dimensional FFT processing to extract the interesting data.

The PCB design used such techniques as a substrate integrated wave-guide where the signal travels in a wave-guide formed between copper layers rather than in the copper itself.

I guess that stealth aircraft don't want to transmit, so they could poach other peoples' RF, including enemies.

I've heard of long-distance HF passive radars that just listen.

Yikes. Must be pretty high frequencies. And expensive boards.

I was just thinking about a multilayer pcb layout that would have a lot of weird shapes and resistors and caps. I was thinking we could use one of those 3D multiphysics programs to model it; it's hard to Dremel multilayer prototypes.

Have you used any of that sort of software? Comsol or something?

Am 01.09.25 um 22:22 schrieb john larkin:

I heard that after last year's Berlin AERO exhibition Hensoldt tracked a F35 for some 100 Km on the way home. The radar was parked on a pony farm west of Berlin. :-)

Gerhard

The webpage shows a warning at the top:

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Probably caused by PHP update that they change constantly (not as bad as, sorry for an expletive, Python that won't run the older code with any new version _AT ALL_ but anyway) so the code requires some changes.

That notice aside, I wonder what the auto it is supposed tobe if just ONE CHIP in it is $30K?

I did a contract during Covid using an "el-cheapo" Stratix 10, the cheapest and smallest one, 1SX040HH3F35E3VG, just mere $3.5K :) or so per chip and my prototype builders were not all that happy reflowing this cheap one into prototype the built for me. The first power-up for a smoke test was also fun...

And that $3.5K pocket change is just a start of the nightmare. There was 9 (nine) power rails with rather complex sequencing and as the cherry on the cake those "cheap" Stratix 10 FPGAs have dynamic core voltage that should be provided by one of a couple of supported switchers, ALL OF THEM DISCONTINUED by their manufacturers at that time (I used EM2120LXQI). It was not all that obvious if they could be replaced with something else at all and what had to be done for such a replacement. That "cheap" Stratix 10 has internal engine/logic that talks to that switcher over pmbus using some proprietary protocol and refuses to bootup/start the FPGA if it fails to talk to that switcher.

I very much doubt if anyone is stupid enough to purchase a high end FPGA like the OP highlighted from Digikey. Most sales of these are handled directly with the manufacturer, and the rrp shown by the likes of Digikey is just pie in the sky. The actual discount on these in quantity is huge (at least I know for a fact this is the case pre the Intel buyout - I assume it's still the case) if you're prepared to commit to a (not unreasonable IMO) volume. If youi're already a customer for these high end devices Altera are (were) more than happy to supply similar high level parts gratis for development. Xilinx likewise.

It was posted as sort of a joke, but then Digikey has become a joke.

Over 1200 have been sold, for about $100M each.

Yes, you have constant wars so need a lot of weapons. But the Top Gun age of manned fighter jets is probably about over.

To France? To Monaco?

Am 02.09.25 um 16:47 schrieb john larkin:

Constant war? Here?

And that from a land that had 12 years of no war since its founding! Where the time from 1492 (the discovery that it exists) to the founding was used up for killing the existing inhabitants? And if no foreign victim happens to be available, the own North against South will do!

Cheers, Gerhard

Most of European history is stories of warfare. Even now.

I wonder if future european islamic republics will be peaceful.

Warfare was common in the Americas before 1492. Guns and horses did make it more efficient.

Lots of bad things were usual all over the world hundreds and thousands of years ago. The remarkable thing is how much we've improved.

Our actual cost from Xilinx for prototype quantities of the large FPGAs was ~$30K. Very little discount. We used some Altera/Intel parts for later parts of the project - those devices were cheap at $3k.

We were not intending the $30k parts for production intent equipment but using for ASIC prototyping. When the design was settled it would have been implemented as an ASIC.

Yes - the signals at the antennas need to match within a tenth of a wavelength or so at 77GHz. The IC itself can do trim the phases to a degree or so.

Production imaging radars for autonomous vehicles are getting down to about $200 per unit. A fully autonomous vehicle would need at least 5 or

Even with all that radar hardware they have many ambiguities and they are easily fooled.

Stationery vehicles, for example, tend to merge into the ground and can be difficult to detect because the angular resolution is limited by the wavelength and practical radar size to about 1.5 degrees.

Jamming, as such, is not really an issue (as of yet) but mutual interference from other radars can be.