Rick Altherr
@kc8apf

Development tools for FPGAs have advanced little since the 90s and FPGA vendors seem to have little incentive to improve them. GCC brought a revolution to software development by lowering the barriers to developing software, providing a vendor-neutral environment to focus on standards and interoperability, and providing a platform for experimentation. I strive to do the same for FPGAs.

I primarily work on Gaffe, a framework for developing FPGA tools similar in concept to LLVM. In addition to building the framework, I also document FPGA architectures and configuration details on my blog.

I have a day job that covers my typical expenses but also a significant amount of my time. Donations allow me to purchase development boards and spend a bit more time that I would otherwise. My target is set at a level that would allow me to consider switching to this work full-time.