Sign in

Kevin Hubbard

@khubbard.bsky.social
1.2K followers 263 following 345 posts

Electrical Engineer. ASICs, FPGAs, Python. Fan of convertibles and 6502 CPUs. Author of Mastering FPGA Chip Design : For Speed, Area, Power, and Reliability. Seattle,WA,US,Earth,Sol,MlkyWy blackmesalabs.wordpress.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
buymeacoffee.com/bml_khubbard...
buymeacoffee.com
Kevin Hubbard
I'm a digital chip designer specializing in ASICs and FPGAs. While my day job involves complex silicon, my passion lies in the open-source EDA movement. I believe that the tools to build the future of
020
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Today I enhanced my Sump3 logic analyzer to let AI analyze millions of captured digital samples. A task far too time‑consuming for humans to tackle. In plain English, I asked "How many times does bsb_frm assert to logic-1 between the cursors". "10" It worked, first try, in spades. This is the way.
050
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
I did a YouTube podcast with Brian Tristam Williams of Elektor Publishing this week. Discussed my new book "Mastering FPGA Chip Design : For Speed, Area, Power, and Reliability" and also technology progression from 1970s to present day. It was fun and would do again. www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2xi...
youtube.com
Mastering FPGA Chip Design with Kevin Hubbard — EEI #56
YouTube video by Elektor TV
220
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
My book just showed up in the wild, in Germany! I am still waiting for my print copy to cross the big pond. I've only ever seen my original PDF manuscript, so this is very exciting. A REAL BOOK! It's about $35 for print or eBook versions. I worked very hard on this. www.elektor.com/products/mas...
1191
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
In grade-school, middle-school and even early high-school, I dreamt of attending MIT to get a degree in Electrical Engineering. It just wasn't in the cards and I attended University of Washington. So glad I did. Everything worked out smashingly in the end. Serendipity.
190
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
I’ve completed my year-long journey to becoming a published author in electrical engineering. Mastering FPGA Chip Design: For Speed, Area, Power, and Reliability is now part of the Elektor Academy Pro series and available in both print and eBook formats: www.elektor.com/products/mas...
elektor.com
Mastering FPGA Chip Design
This book teaches the fundamentals of FPGA operation, covering basic CMOS transistor theory to designing digital FPGA chips using LUTs, flip-flops, and embedded memories. Ideal for electrical engineer...
4298
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
Today I finished the last chapter on my manuscript. 28 chapters, 310 pages. It's been quite the year long journey. It's the one book that I have in me. I really hope it turns out well. Even if it doesn't, I know I gave it my best. It has been a personal and professional journey well worth taking.
2435
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Color text on my VGA graphics controller on a @digilent.bsky.social BASYS3 board! 1280x1024 with a 108 MHz dot clock. 4Kx18 RAM (72Kb, 2 BRAMs) for 80x32 text with 18 bits per text character. 8 bits for ASCII ROM. 5 bits each for Foreground and Background luminance(2) and color(3). Yay - It works!
190
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
This took all day. So frustrating. Backtracked a whole bunch trying to conserve BRAMs. Going to try and add some foreground color next with all the wasted BRAM bits. "Hello World!" digital style in 1280x1024 analog VGA.
060
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Generating VGA video with nothing but logic gates, ASCII text on a 1280x1024 display with an Artix-7 FPGA ( @digilent.bsky.social BASYS3 board ). VGA is EXTREMELY forgiving. With a 100 MHz reference oscillator, 107.4627 MHz (900/8.375) is as close as I can get to a 108 MHz dot-clock. Not a problem.
1203
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Probably still my favorite computer. Got me through high school and the start of college. So much in such a little package ( for the time ). Even connected me to a VAX PDP-11. The Apple //c.
360
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
The more Python I write, the more I realize it is the most perfect and most likely the last computer programming language that I will ever learn after doing this for 45+ years now. Today was a very good day at BlackMesaLabs. I feel like that fictional "10x Engineer" bullshit.
1100
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
I'm still hopping on Twitter every couple of days. I'm only there to post articles about Elon Musk though. What an awful person. Trump and Musk truly deserve each other. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/20/w...
nytimes.com
Musk Expresses Support for Far-Right Party in Germany’s Election (Gift Article)
It was not the first online intervention by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and adviser to Donald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immigrant parties in Europe.
2184
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
@woolaf.bsky.social Tom told me to follow you. What I've discovered over the years is that @radiofreetom.bsky.social is never wrong.
040
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
So my "retirement plan" from designing digital chips for profit ( ASICs and FPGAs ) since the 1990s is to stop at age 70 (2040) and just start writing software and fill up my GitHub site with useful free and open source Python programs. That's my dream anyways. I very well might be hallucinating.
292
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
Today, Yahoo killed "my.yahoo.com" that I had used for decades to track my stock portfolio. Pissed me off. So I wrote a program to replace it, "my_stock_watcher.py". It's WAY better than their old website. It's free. No ads. So Fuck You Yahoo. We're done. End Of Story. github.com/blackmesalab...
github.com
4181
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
It brings me endless joy that Chat-GPT both knows about and correctly describes my open-source project.
191
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
I was going through some old photos and ran across one of my very first code review. The year : 1978. The reviewer : my mother.
170
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 04/12/2024
@jentaub.bsky.social Happy Birthday!
010
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
We lost power (along with 1/2 million other Seattle area Eastsiders) last week when the "Bomb Cyclone" with 74 mph winds came through. It was 5 days total. Thankfully not in the dark or cold. Gas fireplace still worked and my solar charged battery bank kept us in light. Upgrading to LiFePO4 next.
2150
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Starting "America Against America" by Wang Huning. "An outlook of why US is potentially heading toward a decline. Published in 1991, still widely read amongst high level Chinese political figures and bureaucrats. Any serious student of US-China relations will benefit greatly from reading this book."
150
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Certainly sucks to be the CFO of Twitter these days. It's a mass exodus from X. "The Guardian has announced it will no longer post content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from its official accounts." www.theguardian.com/media/2024/n...
theguardian.com
Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts
Platform’s coverage of US election crystallised longstanding concerns about its content, says Guardian
1111
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
@stonekettle.bsky.social has a new essay on that other social media website. Check it out. www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/...
facebook.com
Redirecting...
000
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Today I stayed off Twitter, and: No Tesla, drove my 1994 Honda. No WaPo, read The Guardian. No SpaceX into orbit, I never left Issaquah. No Starlink, just Xfinity ISP for me. No AWS, just a stack of old Linux laptops. I bought two books and 2lbs of coffee from Amazon. I wish I knew how to quit you.
070
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
I started something new: I am turning my FPGA blog series (link) into a book, "FPGA Chip Design for Speed, Area, Power, and Reliability." I even signed a contract with a publisher last month. I look forward to sharing with everyone when I am done in 2025. blackmesalabs.wordpress.com/2024/05/27/b...
blackmesalabs.wordpress.com
BML FPGA Design Tutorial Part-Intro
Table of Contents:Part-1 : So what is digital logic design exactly?Part-2 : Using structural Verilog to make a working FPGA design.Part-3 : Using RTL Verilog and HDL to infer a working FPGA design.…
2172
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
My oldest daughter is 3rd generation UW Husky. She took me to the UW-USC game last night (26-21 Win!). I always enjoy going back on campus and seeing what is new and what hasn't changed. The Paul Allen Electrical Engineering building left of fountain is amazing. I love being back. Class of 1993.
180
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
This was my November 6th post on that other place. I'm still trying to figure out how to move forward.
060
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 22/04/2024
New post on downloading and installing "free" Intel/Altera version of the excellent ModelSim Questa VHDL+Verilog simulator. I've been using this simulator professionally for 30 years now and it's great to have it up and running at home for hobby projects. blackmesalabs.wordpress.com/2024/04/21/m...
031
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 11/04/2024
I have a new open-source project that dropped on GitHub. It's called SUMP3 and it's a scalable logic analyzer for FPGA chips ( or ASICs ). Secret sauce is real time HW compression and 2-wire interface to the capture blocks ( RLE Pods ). Read about it here: blackmesalabs.wordpress.com/2024/03/11/s...
150
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 06/01/2024
I find it odd that we all don't have $500 sunglasses that act as 1080p displays for our iPhones and stream Roku TV shows direct to our eyes. People won't walk around wearing $1,000 ski goggles for this - Ray Bans though!. Is it only battery technology that is preventing this, or something else?
100
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 01/01/2024
Kevin : Write a thriller novel starring Steamboat Willie as a secret agent that HALO jumps into Taiwan to stop a Chinese invasion. The novel should involve AI and TSMC and have a happy ending.
010
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 28/12/2023
DALL-E failed my Turing test. "Draw me an image of a TSMC worker in a bunny suit making computer chips."
000
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 24/12/2023
I'm on break for a week and decided to go down the AI rabbit hole and learn hands on about LLM with ChatGPT-3.5 ( chat.openai.com ) on my time off. Very impressed with its ability to generate example Python for solving problems. Definitely not sentient, more like the ship's computer on Star Trek.
110
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 15/12/2023
Being able to deposit a check at your bank by taking a picture of it with a telephone at home is one of those technology progression things I just never would have predicted. Remember "Back to the Future - Part II" where Fax machines in every room was the big tech prediction of the future?
100
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 14/12/2023
Constant reminder in life: "Everything comes to an end." youtu.be/1Q7IfrS8CI4?...
000
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 05/12/2023
Reading up on the Cold War. I knew Oct-1962 was bad, but wow! Russian generals in Cuba ordered missiles be fired at a U-2, killing the US pilot. SAC was brought to DEFCON-2. 200 B-47 bombers were loaded up with nukes and staged at commercial airports across the country. www.amazon.com/dp/0143125788
100
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 05/12/2023
I'm a hardware designer that understands and makes frequent use of recursive function calls. Makes me both special and a rather odd duck. Quack-quack-quack.
020
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 02/12/2023
If AI is so powerful, why do I still receive "IRS" emails like this from : kusamkasim892913424541@kilimanjanu.co.nz ?
031
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 20/11/2023
Rather than constantly creating new 140KB disk images to try new code, I'm attempting to prototype Micol "Advanced" BASIC for the Apple //e on my Linux workstation using "FreeBASIC". What's really wonderful about BASIC is all the implementations are at least 25% different from each other. (sarcasm)
140
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 05/11/2023
I probably laughed a little too hard on this. English is a strange language.
010
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
My biggest hurdle in trying to write Apple //e retro SW is constantly reaching into my "tool box" and finding the tools just don't exist. Today it's the lack of bitwise operators ( AND, OR, Bit-Shift ) in Micol BASIC. It's like wanting to build a deck and realizing you have to build a hammer first.
120
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 29/10/2023
Cleaned my home office today to make room for my new work laptop's Type-C port expander. Well, I cleaned the left-side of the office anyways. The right-side is still very much an EPA Super-Fund cleanup site. ( and I like it that way )
100
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
Learning 1993 Micol BASIC for Apple //e. Strange as I dropped out of the Apple // scene completely in 1989 when I sold my //c and bought an 80386. 1993 and this company is trying to keep this 8bit platform alive while I'm using Orcad386 (DOS) and MS-Windows 3.0 and NT is coming soon. Worlds apart.
010
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 15/10/2023
Wow - it's been 16 years now. Starting to wonder if I should re-watch The Sopranos. I re-watched "Band of Brothers" recently and I enjoyed it just as much 2nd go around.
110
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 08/10/2023
If I eventually end up in a long-term care facility with Alzheimers, I'm requesting a non-stop stream of Bugs Bunny, Road Runner and ABBA videos. Absolutely certain this will make me happy until the end of time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkL7...
110
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 08/10/2023
Millions of innocent Palestinians are about the suffer the almighty wrath of the Israeli IDF. It's just a lose-lose situation for everyone and it makes me sad. What a mess.
110
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 04/10/2023
When I was 10 or 11 or so, I had this dream of building a Motorola 6847 "GPU" add-on board for my TRS-80 Model-1 and giving it color graphics so it would be glorious. I ended up buying an Apple ][+ instead. I'm left wondering why Woz didn't use this marvelous chip. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorol...
240
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 26/09/2023
Today I ordered my 4 free COVID-19 tests courtesy of Uncle Sam. Did you? www.covid.gov/tests
220
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 20/09/2023
Not a great sign that I offered up my single Golden-Ticket code to this place (BlueSky) on Twitter 30 minutes ago and got zero takers for it. Apparently 50 people saw the post anyways. Just not interested in joining BlueSky ( or have already joined? ).
240
Kevin Hubbard @khubbard.bsky.social · 20/09/2023
Yeah, um - so I REALLY want to buy this. I won't. I'm showing restraint. I'm an adult now. But it's EXACTLY like seeing and ad for a 1969 Datsun 240Z in mint condition for $3,000. How could a person not?
110