Building own AVR with FPGA?

[anphex]

Greetings everyone!

Looking at the current state of AVR processors and receivers, it's kind of meh. Well, for the price they're mostly alright (Hi Denon ) but in almost all cases something is amiss.

The propietary room calibrations are expensive, the stock variants rarely are optimal and allow for precise adjustements.
The amps and preouts are far below the performance of a mid class DAC or power amp.
Due to new formats every 2-3 years an AVR is kind of obsolete unless you don't require the latest technolgy.

This and many other small annoyances.
Nowadays we got really powerful affordable FPGAs. I eyed the ones from Xilinx (Denon uses those too right?) since they seem to have the most up to date HDMI capabilities.

So, how hard is it? Is it even remotely possible for a hobbyist to get his hands on the parts, IP cores and program an FPGA from the ground up to make himself a "modular" AVR?
I admit, some cockiness of my plan arises of the idea doing this while being assisted by GPT4. But I had already incredible coding successes with this tool, I honestly believe GPT4 could write you the whole code if you know what you want to achieve.

 

[antcollinet]

.... Is it even remotely possible ....

No.

HTH

 

[voodooless]

Greetings everyone!

The propietary room calibrations are expensive, the stock variants rarely are optimal and allow for precise adjustements.

Audyssey and Dirac are pretty good and allow plenty of adjustments. Obviously they are made for easy usage, not for ultimate flexibility.

The amps and preouts are far below the performance of a mid class DAC or power amp.
Due to new formats every 2-3 years an AVR is kind of obsolete unless you don't require the latest technolgy.

What new formats have we seen the last few years? We did get new HDMI standards, but otherwise, nothing much. And new HDMI versions will also need new FPGA chips to handle the new bandwidths. One can ask however how much more one really needs after 2.1, especially for non-gaming.

This and many other small annoyances.
Nowadays we got really powerful affordable FPGAs. I eyed the ones from Xilinx (Denon uses those too right?) since they seem to have the most up to date HDMI capabilities.

Have you checked the prices on those FPGAs? They are very expensive! Denon may use for FPGA, but not these. Dedicated chips are much cheaper. The main audio decoding is done by DSP chips. Those are quite different beasts.

So, how hard is it? Is it even remotely possible for a hobbyist to get his hands on the parts, IP cores and program an FPGA from the ground up to make himself a "modular" AVR?

Probably not. Only for the HDCP license you’ll need to be a HDMI member. The HDMI IP core for the FPGA is also not free. Never mind all of the codecs needed.

I admit, some cockiness of my plan arises of the idea doing this while being assisted by GPT4. But I had already incredible coding successes with this tool, I honestly believe GPT4 could write you the whole code if you know what you want to achieve.

It most definitely cannot.

You’d be much better off using generic computer hardware, and even with that it’s going to have a great many roadblocks.

 

[FrantzM]

Not easy. Lot of work for not necessarily great end results
Your path is similar to what Trinnov, Storm, DATASAT, etc., have undertaken for commercial reasons. All of these are expensive.

20 years ago HTPC were all the rage.. Today, not so much.

I (We?) would like to follow your progress however.
Good Luck

Peace.

 

[sarumbear]

Greetings everyone!

Looking at the current state of AVR processors and receivers, it's kind of meh. Well, for the price they're mostly alright (Hi Denon ) but in almost all cases something is amiss.

The propietary room calibrations are expensive, the stock variants rarely are optimal and allow for precise adjustements.
The amps and preouts are far below the performance of a mid class DAC or power amp.
Due to new formats every 2-3 years an AVR is kind of obsolete unless you don't require the latest technolgy.

This and many other small annoyances.
Nowadays we got really powerful affordable FPGAs. I eyed the ones from Xilinx (Denon uses those too right?) since they seem to have the most up to date HDMI capabilities.

So, how hard is it? Is it even remotely possible for a hobbyist to get his hands on the parts, IP cores and program an FPGA from the ground up to make himself a "modular" AVR?
I admit, some cockiness of my plan arises of the idea doing this while being assisted by GPT4. But I had already incredible coding successes with this tool, I honestly believe GPT4 could write you the whole code if you know what you want to achieve.

How do you plan to license the codecs and HDCP?