Arduino MKR VIDOR 4000 FPGA — Tic Tac Toe
Dick Smith is an Australian entrepreneur, aviator and philanthropist. He holds a number of aviation world records and is the founder of Dick Smith Electronics, Australian Geographic and Dick Smith Foods. He was selected as the Australian of the Year in 1986.
He also issued a challenge in Silicon Chip magazine to create a machine that plays the perfect noughts-and-crosses game. In his recent autobiography, Dick describes building a machine like this as one of the turning points in his life. Of course he did this at age 14, back in 1958, so it was a significant achievement. This is a trivial exercise in programming these days, so we decided to try and do it the hardest way possible — using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). We have never used one of these and this seemed like a good excuse to take one out for a spin.
What is FPGA?
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured after manufacturing. Usually an IC will have its hardware set in stone during the manufacturing process. The FPGA is able to have its hardware modified using a Hardware Description Language.
