Glenn Kirilow is the founder and creative mastermind behind TheEEView and has over 10 years of
industry experience across several sectors, including automotive, broadcast, instrumentation, and
education. He has worked for several global organizations such as Continental, Blackmagic Design, and
Seeing Machines.
With a Masters in Microelectronics and a Bachelor's Degree in Electronic Engineering from La Trobe
University, Glenn is passionate about keeping up-to-date with the latest technologies, pushing
boundaries, and sharing his acquired knowledge. Glenn aims to impart his knowledge in an engaging,
authentic, and intuitive way through challenging real-world problems.
Discuss how to approach going from an AMD (previously Xilinx) FPGA to a different brand such as Efinix which is becoming a common task with the global supply chain issues.
What is the main reason Glenn Kirilow recommends speaking with suppliers as soon as possible when selecting an FPGA?
ATo determine part availability and avoid wasting R&D if a part has long lead times or becomes unavailable.
BTo negotiate the lowest possible unit price before committing to a vendor.
CTo acquire free development boards and samples so you don't need to buy them later.
DTo transfer responsibility for manufacturing scheduling entirely to the supplier.
ETo have the supplier choose the vendor based on what the university team used previously.
Which engineering approach does Glenn recommend to compare resource suitability across different FPGA vendors?
AWrite vendor-independent wrappers, create separate architectures that instantiate each vendor's IP, and run place-and-route to get concrete resource reports for each vendor.
BRely solely on datasheets and vendor videos to estimate resource usage without running implementations.
CUse a single vendor's synthesis/place-and-route tool to estimate resources for all other vendors.
DAsk FAEs to provide final post-route resource numbers without doing your own implementation work.
EManually count and estimate LUTs and flip-flops on paper instead of using the vendor tools.
According to Glenn, what is a practical hands-on first step to evaluate alternative FPGA vendors?
ABuy and use vendor evaluation (dev) boards to test and compare options in hardware.
BImmediately redesign your production PCB for each alternative vendor before any testing.
CAvoid hardware testing and rely only on long simulations to save time.
DDelay trying alternatives until after the first production run to avoid extra work.
EMass-order parts from multiple vendors for all possible variants without prototyping.