For those looking for cheap FPGA boards, I highly recommend looking for something that is based on the Lattice ICE40. The cheapest board you can find is probably the $9 Upduino, though trickier to get going. (Complete lack of documentation.)
But there are tons of hobby boards in existence.
The best part is Project IceStorm, a fully open source tool flow, from synthesis to bitstream. While not the best in terms of optimization, it's killer feature is that it's blazing fast. You can get small design synthesized and converted to a place-and-routed bitstream in under a minute.
But there are tons of hobby boards in existence.
The best part is Project IceStorm, a fully open source tool flow, from synthesis to bitstream. While not the best in terms of optimization, it's killer feature is that it's blazing fast. You can get small design synthesized and converted to a place-and-routed bitstream in under a minute.