



I. Defeating HDCP Was Easy








Sources: Informationsdienst Wissenschaft, reghardware

Comments     Threshold


So the board....
By SlickRoenick on 11/28/2011 10:38:19 AM , Rating: -1
....was a soundcard?

RE: So the board....
By rebound11 on 11/28/2011 10:59:00 AM , Rating: 2
I have absolutely no clue where you got that idea... but apparently neither you or the author know anything about FPGAs.

RE: So the board....
By quiksilvr on 11/28/2011 11:27:33 AM , Rating: 4
Probably the green, blue and pink parts shown on the chips. Looks like the inputs/outputs you see on a sound card.

RE: So the board....
By Cypherdude1 on 11/28/2011 2:59:32 PM , Rating: 3
....was a soundcard?

Your post made me curious so I did a qwickie search and found it. It's made by Diligent called the "Atlys™ Spartan-6 FPGA Development Board":

It's not a conventional sound card because it doesn't plug into a PCI or PCIe slot. However, it does have:
One Vmod™ (high-speed VHDC) connector
One 12-pin Pmod™ connector
One RJ-45 connector for 10/100/1000 Ethernet PHY and RS-232 serial
Two HDMI video input ports & two HDMI output ports
Two on-board USB2 ports for programming & data transfer
AC-97 audio with line-in, line-out, mic, & headphone

It also has:
GPIO includes 8 LEDs , 6 buttons, & 8 slide switches
Ships with a 20W power supply and USB cable

I'm not an engineer but this is an interesting board. They must use this board to develop all kinds of interesting hardware applications:
The Atlys circuit board is a complete, ready-to-use digital circuit development platform based on a Xilinx Spartan 6 LX45 FPGA. The on-board collection of high-end peripherals, including Gbit Ethernet, HDMI Video, 128Mbyte DDR2 memory array, audio and USB ports make the Atlys board an ideal host for complete digital systems built around embedded processors like Xilinx’s MicroBlaze. Atlys is fully compatible with all Xilinx CAD tools, including ChipScope, EDK, and the free WebPack, so designs can be completed with no extra costs.

I guess if you would like to learn and design firmware you could buy this board as a hobby or, as someone mentioned below, as a student. I wonder which software you use to program it. Do you program it in assembly language? It costs $349.00 or $199.00 for students.

RE: So the board....
By MrTeal on 11/28/2011 3:25:52 PM , Rating: 2
You'd probably program it using Verilog or VHDL, though there are other ways to do it.

RE: So the board....
By ForceCredit on 11/28/2011 4:10:46 PM , Rating: 3
Like I mentioned earlier, the board does absolutely nothing in its base form. FPGA development boards come with a slew of chips attached to them so that you might use a board to prototype any number of different kinds of machines.

There is no processor and the board is not a computer of any kind. The Ethernet PHY doesn't enable networking, the RS-232 interface doesn't enable serial communication, the USB port doesn't let you use a USB device with it (or use itself as a USB device), and the AC97 codec doesn't generate audio.

Nothing at all happens until you design a state machine that interacts with those various chips in ways which make them do something. This is done purely by toggling signal pins high and low in patterns that cause the chip on the other end to respond in a predictable way. These state machines are written in HDLs (hardware descriptive languages) like Verilog and VHDL, not software programming languages. The syntax is similar in a lot of ways, but the fundamentals about what you're actually doing with the code are very different.

FPGAs are like an ASIC made out of Playdoh. They don't execute instructions when you program them. What you do instead is program them with a logical electrical model which is loaded into the device's cells. These cells contain inputs, outputs, and a LUT. The cells can be made to change their outputs depending on what the inputs are. When you stick a bunch of those together, you create a digital logic system--a state machine. You could create a CPU that executes instructions inside the FPGA itself, but the FPGA is not itself analogous to a computer.

On a side note, the FPGA itself is about a $50 chip when purchased in quantities of 1. The rest of the cost goes to whatever else is on the board and profit for Digilent. It's worth noting that you could make your own board without the stuff you don't need for about $20.

RE: So the board....
By Fritzr on 11/28/2011 10:54:41 PM , Rating: 2
Some of those "state machines" ARE micro-processors. At least one real computer has been released using an FPGA as a 'programmable' CPU allowing programs to be run on multiple chip architectures that can be soft-loaded.

Known as the C-1, the machine was designed as a hardware emulation of the C-64 and can load other state machines also.

The DTV uses an ASIC (factory programmed gate array) in a similar manner. It would be possible to substitute an FPGA for the ASIC in the DTV design.

A research machine made for the military used 1 FPGA to do image processing that required multiple custom chips. The design reprogrammed the FPGA between processing stages ... FPGA based computers are very versatile :)

In this case the FPGA was loaded with a state machine that emulates a licensed HDMI 1.x connection. The next step will be to design a state machine that emulates a licensed HDMI 2.x connection and publish the code. When that is done, HDMI will no longer be a secure connection :)

This article does not say a CPU is included in the emulation, but if one is required an FPGA can be a CPU.

RE: So the board....
By ForceCredit on 11/29/2011 10:19:54 AM , Rating: 2
I did mention that you could do that in the post you replied to. heh

It's even something most FPGA manufacturers will throw at you for free that you're welcome to load into projects and use (*Blaze from Xilinx, Nios from Altera, etc). I've created them (CPUs, entire computers) from scratch myself in my own projects using Xilinx FPGA products, actually. I'm definitely aware of it.

RE: So the board....
By JasonMick (blog) on 11/28/2011 12:20:02 PM , Rating: 2
That a silly comment. I own a Spartan 3 Xilinx board from Digilent. Haven't used it years, but I programmed loads of designs back in my undergrad years, though mostly boring stuff like checkout machine software chips.

To be honest I remember the basics, but would need a refresher to do anything serious.

I had a buddy who did essentially a 3D maze game on a Spartan 3, complete with raytracing. Now THAT was sweet.

RE: So the board....
s/That a/That's a/g

Darn, typos...

RE: So the board....
By ForceCredit on 11/28/2011 11:07:27 AM , Rating: 4
An FPGA is essentially a blank slate. That board is an FPGA evaluation board, meaning it has an FPGA on it and a bunch of commonly-used chips paired with it. That usually includes stuff like DACs, flash memory, switches, LEDs, RAM, Ethernet support chips, various transceivers, etc. The idea is to let a developer buy an inexpensive board and play with it to see if they can do what they want with the chip before designing and building custom boards.

In short, no, it's not a "sound card". Until you design a state machine in some supported HDL like Verilog or VHDL, the board is basically a brick that does absolutely nothing.

RE: So the board....
By AlvinCool on 11/28/2011 11:38:34 AM , Rating: 2
That's not a sound card. It's an Atlys Spartan-6 FPGA Development Board

RE: So the board....
By rpierce on 11/28/2011 12:56:10 PM , Rating: 4
I know what this is...
This is an espresso machine.
No, no wait. It's a snow cone maker.
Is it a water heater?

RE: So the board....
By Hieyeck on 11/28/2011 2:06:05 PM , Rating: 2


RE: So the board....
By FITCamaro on 11/28/2011 2:15:39 PM , Rating: 1
/Holds gun to wives head.

RE: So the board....
By ekv on 11/28/2011 8:35:51 PM , Rating: 2
Wife's (possessive) or Wives (plural) ?


RE: So the board....
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 11/29/2011 6:22:34 AM , Rating: 2
Plural of course, just as any bloke would hope for.

RE: So the board....
By MrBlastman on 11/29/2011 12:46:44 PM , Rating: 2
Two times the headache? Really?

RE: So the board....
By mostyle on 11/30/2011 1:21:42 AM , Rating: 2
Not really.. Just opt for the deluxe version..

They are twin mutes...

RE: So the board....
By bug77 on 11/30/2011 4:28:06 PM , Rating: 2
Two mothers in law FTL!

RE: So the board....
By angryplayer on 12/1/2011 12:00:49 AM , Rating: 2
Unless they're hot sisters...?


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