Forgix Board Pairs an RP2354 MCU With an FPGA for $50

Forgix Puts a Microcontroller and an FPGA on One $50 Board

For makers who have always been curious about FPGAs but found dedicated boards intimidating or expensive, the Forgix is a genuinely welcoming on-ramp. Unveiled on July 14, 2026 by Adiuvo Engineering, this compact development board pairs a Raspberry Pi RP2354B microcontroller with an Efinix Trion T8 FPGA in a breadboard-friendly Teensy 4.0 footprint — and it costs just $50. It is a clever, affordable way to explore hardware-software co-design without leaving the hobbyist workbench, and the whole design is open source.

• Price and form factor: $50, in a 36 x 18 mm Teensy 4.0-compatible layout with through-hole and castellated pads
• The MCU: RP2354B with dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 and dual-core RISC-V Hazard3 (both at 150 MHz), 520 KB SRAM, and 2 MB of in-package flash
• The FPGA: Efinix Trion T8 with 7,384 logic elements, 122.88 kbit of internal RAM, and 8 embedded multipliers, linked to the MCU over SPI
• Openness: Adiuvo published KiCad design files, PDF schematics, RP2354 C firmware, and Python bitstream-loader code on Bitbucket

Why Combine a Microcontroller With an FPGA?

The two chips are good at different things, and putting them together is the point. A microcontroller like the RP2354 is easy to program in C or Python and excels at general logic, sensor handling, and USB communication. An FPGA is reconfigurable hardware — you describe digital logic that runs in true parallel, ideal for high-speed signal processing, custom interfaces, or timing-critical tasks a CPU would struggle with. On the Forgix, the RP2354 handles the friendly software side and loads bitstreams onto the Trion T8 over SPI, so you can offload the fast, parallel work to the FPGA fabric. Notably, the RP2354 also carries dual RISC-V cores alongside its Arm cores, giving learners a taste of the open RISC-V architecture on the same little board.

A Great Fit for the Learning Bench

Because it follows the Teensy form factor with castellated holes, the Forgix drops straight into a breadboard or solders onto a carrier, and a single USB Type-C port handles both power and programming. That low-friction setup, plus the fully open KiCad hardware files, makes it an excellent teaching tool for anyone moving from single-board computers into reconfigurable logic. It slots neatly alongside other approachable mini computer and SBC projects we love, and it echoes the accessible, hackable spirit of boards like the ELM11 programmable FPGA Feather.

The Bigger Picture

Affordable, open hardware that lowers the barrier to a traditionally advanced skill is exactly the kind of story worth celebrating. At $50 with published design files, the Forgix invites a whole new wave of hobbyists to learn FPGA and MCU co-design hands-on — and to remix the board itself if they want to. For the maker community, that is a small board with an outsized, encouraging message: the tools keep getting more open, and more within reach.

Sources: CNX Software — July 14, 2026; LinuxGizmos — July 2026; EE Journal — July 2026.