by Max Maxfield
Every now and then, someone comes up with an idea that makes me think, “Wow, that’s a great concept, why didn’t I think of that?” This was the case a couple of years ago when I was introduced to Jason Pecor from Alorium Technology. In turn, Jason introduced me to their XLR8 (“Accelerate”), which is a drop-in replacement for an Arduino with an interesting twist.
As we see below, the XLR8 has the same physical footprint as a regular Arduino Uno. The difference is that, as opposed to using a regular 8-bit ATmega328P microcontroller from Microchip Technology, the XLR8 features a MAX 10 FPGA from Altera (now Intel). This FPGA has been configured to behave exactly like the Uno’s processor, which is implemented as a soft core, right down to the 32 KB Flash memory and the 2 KB RAM, all running at 16 MHz.