Post #3656134
2026-07-07 19:09 UTC
I was going to rant about how thanks to AI and the RAM shortage, the most interesting tech to me lately seems to be microcontrollers and FPGAs. 🤷
I had just stumbled across the Tang Mega, a 138K LU board based on the Gowin Chinese FPGAs. I thought it was neat to see a readily available board with comparable capabilities to the DE10 Nano (AKA the guts of the popular MiSTer FPGA multi-console gaming devices).
Neat!
I have some of the smaller Tang FPGA boards with 4k and 20k LUs, but I had no idea they offered 60k and 130k options. OF COURSE I then find a "roadmap" suggesting these came out in 2023/2024??!? 😳
Unfortunately the pricing of the larger FPGA modules is competitive with what I remember some Intel (Altera) and AMD (Xylinx) boards costing... Though I haven't looked into that in quite some time. I greatly prefer Chinese products when they greatly undercut the costs (see Allwinner vs Qualcomm). Ah well. 🤷
Replies (1)
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@pawv@tech.lgbt 2026-07-07 19:25
Anyway, this Tang FPGA card is a proper dev kit for an exotic FPGA (Gowin). They have nothing to do with gaming "DMA" cheating cards. The "DMA" cards seem to feature Xylinx (AMD) FPGAs. They come in 35T, 75T, and 100T variations, each corresponding with a different Xylinx Artix FPGA with roughly the same number of LUs (35k, 75k, and 100k). I'm not sure how useful these cards would be for other uses, but I did find a 75T model for C$120 (before AliExpress coupon shenanigans). 😋 Also I think it's funny how they seem to be going for a "stealth" aesthetic. 🤣