pico-ice

The pico-ice is a small, low-cost FPGA trainer board with the Raspberry Pi Pico processor (RP2040) and a Lattice Semiconductor iCE40UP5K FPGA.

This FPGA trainer board features independent flash for the FPGA and RP2040, low power SSRAM, a couple of pushbuttons and a 3 color LED with all FPGA and RP2040 pins brought out to easy to use 0.1" header pins (arranged as Pmod's) for fast prototyping.

This board is used by several universities and colleges in the US, EU and South America as FPGA educational board. 

This trainer boards offers a practical platform for exploring digital design, hardware description languages (HDLs), and the core functions of FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays). Equipped with peripherals like LEDs, switches, and various I/O interfaces, this board is perfect for hands-on experimentation and gaining a solid understanding of FPGA programming and hardware design basics.

Hardware features of Pico Ice FPGA trainer board:

• Raspberry Pi RP2040 processor
• Lattice UltraPlus ICE40UP5K FPGA with 5.3k LUTs, 1Mb SPRAM, 120Kb DPRAM, 8 Multipliers
• ALL RP2040 and 32 FPGA GPIO on 0.1” headers
• 4MB SPI Flash
• 8MB low power qSPI SRAM
• RGB LED, shared between the RP2040 and FPGA
• 2 pushbuttons, 1 dedicated and 1 primarily for processor reset during development but can be repurposed for user applications when not used for reset
• On board 3.3V and 1.2V Regulators, can supply 3.3V to your project
• Open source schematic and layout using KiCAD design tools
• 4 layer board with a solid ground plane for good signal integrity
  

FPGA board firmware features:

• FPGA clock supplied by the RP2040, easy to program FPGA clock under SW control
• RP2040 can program the FPGA in various ways
• Examples for communicating to the FPGA from USB to UART or SPI
• Support for ultra low power sleep mode: can shut down the RP2040 and FPGA while keeping the SRAM powered
  

Compared to other FPGA trainer boards, Pico Ice is much more powerful yet inexpensive. Start your FPGA educational journey today with our Pico Ice FPGA board.