Signaloid C0-microSD

The Signaloid C0-microSD is a tiny programmable FPGA System-on-Module (SoM) that makes it possible to extend your existing industrial automation, manufacturing, and robotics systems with an FPGA-based hardware accelerator. It comes in a microSD form factor, fits in any unused SD or microSD slot, and can be interfaced with as a standard SD block device. This makes it possible, for the first time, to implement hardware acceleration for many data-processing tasks at the edge, even if your system lacks traditional expansion options such as a PCIe M.2 slot!

The Signaloid C0-microSD is based on the Lattice Semiconductor iCE40 FPGA. It comes preloaded with a version of our C0 RISC-V processor SoC but you can also load your own custom FPGA designs.

The Signaloid C0-microSD has two main use cases: You can either (1) use it as a hot-pluggable FPGA module, or (2) use it as a hot-pluggable Signaloid C0 RISC-V co-processor module. When plugged into a host computer, it appears as an empty and unformatted SD storage device. You can easily load custom FPGA bitstreams and applications for the built-in Signaloid SoC via the SD interface.

When using the Signaloid C0-microSD as a hot-pluggable FPGA SoM, you can plug it into your computer, flash new FPGA bitstreams, and then either plug it into a breadboard using a microSD breakout board or integrate it into a legacy (or custom) PCB that has an unused microSD slot. Once powered on, the built-in bootloader will check if the device has been connected to an SD host, and if not, will load the latest custom user bitstream. In this configuration, the C0-microSD offers six configurable I/O pins by repurposing the microSD pads, and five additional I/O pins in the form of test pads.

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