[Cryptography] Raspberry Pi-like FPGA ??

[Ron Garret]

On Jul 18, 2017, at 7:02 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:

> Does anyone sell a cheap, easy-to-experiment with, FPGA?
> 
> Ideally, something small, powered by USB, perhaps with a
> standard ARM-like (or MIPS-like) CPU to fire it up.
> 
> What sort of SW tools are available -- e.g., C-like
> compilers, emulators, etc. ?
> 
> If standard CPU chips won't cut it for crypto, perhaps
> it's time for us sheeple to start experimenting with FPGA’s.

You can noodle around with FPGAs on AWS now:

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/f1/

But I really would like to know why you think that a dedicated ARM chip with a crypto app running on the bare metal is not good enough.  You can get a Rapsberry Pi Zero and put it in a metal case for about $10.  Why is that not good enough?

rg