Getting started with FPGA

Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:45 pm   

FPGA is fixed to board and programmed in place. FPGA can be programmed
with either ISE or QUARTUS or another software provided from the
boards manufacturer.

There are programs you can simulate your HDL code. I don't know any
program other than ISE or QUARTUS that generates the programming files
for your FPGA.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 12:57 pm   

You'll need it to test your designs!

As above(/below) most of the vendors include an OEM version with their
downloadable tools.


Nial.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 1:00 pm   

Since you've seen the expert's replies, I'll weigh in from a similar
place to you (i.e. a newbie ). I bought a Xylinx Spartan3 starter kit:

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,799&Prod=S3BOARD

(although I spent the $50 to upgrade to the bigger FPGA so it was $15
instead o $109 plus a download cable) and a copy of Dr Chu's book (anothe
$100 ) based on the reviews here:

http://www.fpgarelated.com/books/30.php

I have the VHDL one but there is one for verilog as well. Of especial not
is
that he includes a couple of simple test bench examples (and references t
more information on test benches) which is very helpful. The examples i
the book use the starter kit board for a variety of projects to teach hand
on and as a bonus there is a on the web (google will likely find it, th
url isn't to hand at the moment but I can dig it up if needed) a projec
that turns the starter kit in to a 32 channel 100 meg logic analyser so
expect it to have life after I've finished the book (one can never have to
many logic analysers in my view ). As far as I can see the book cover
all of the common pitfalls that get pointed out in comp.arch.fpga as well.
There are other boards available from Digilent too and you may want t
have a look at

http://www.fpga4fun.com boards and good tutorial information
http://www.fpga-faq.com/FPGA_Boards.shtml a listing of many many de
boards
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk boards, and the only inexpensive Etherne
PHYs
that I'm aware of (only 10/100 but not $500 US either!)

if you are interested in host busses such as PCI or PCI-E (which you ma
not
be) that may influence what you buy. As well there are lots of open source
FPGA projects available on www.opencores.org. Hope this helps!

Peter Van Epp




---------------------------------------
Posted through http://www.FPGARelated.com

Wed Aug 18, 2010 2:14 pm   

On Aug 18, 11:11 am, "Nial Stewart"
<nial*REMOVE_TH...@nialstewartdevelopments.co.uk> wrote:

Thanks, this is good to know. I'm pretty comfortable in Emacs so I'll
try that out. I also notice that ModelSim does a free cut down
'student' version, which sounds like it will make a very good starting
point.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 2:19 pm   

On Aug 18, 12:14 pm, "rupertlssm...@googlemail.com"
<rupertlssm...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Looks like its for genuine higher education use only, and possibly
only for windows. I'll try out the hardware vendors tools, and maybe
come back to modelsim later.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 3:07 pm   

What about books? Can anyone recommend a good book to get started
with? I like books that are not too dry and start simple then build up
the complexity of the subject in a hands on tutorial way. There are
lots of books on Amazon, but not many of them have reviews, which
makes it hard to choose. I guess the readership of these books is not
so huge that lots of reviews get written.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 3:54 pm   

<rupertlssmith_at_googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:2557f9e5-e8ed-451a-b716-1e7954f56f39_at_x21g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
On Aug 18, 2:56 pm, Gabor <ga...@alacron.com> wrote:

Ok, thanks for pointing that out. I guess that's why its important to
have a hands on approach.

These books seems to get a lot of god reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-VHDL-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185317/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282133861&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-Verilog-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185325/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282133861&sr=8-8


Only $29!

My experience with Lattice and their tools has been good. They now bundle
the Aldec simulator which I must like since I have the paid for version
(many $k).
The Brevia kit looks very good value to start but the JTAG adaptor needs
your PC to have a real parallel port. I've always used Windows for FPGA
development so I can't comment on how well Lattice tools will work with
Linux.

Michael Kellett

Wed Aug 18, 2010 4:56 pm   

On Aug 18, 8:07 am, "rupertlssm...@googlemail.com"
<rupertlssm...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I wish I could. I have found that there are books on Verilog and VHDL
that don't clearly delineate what can be synthesized and what can't.
Having started from a hardware background in the pencil and paper
design days and starting with programmable devices using PALASM,
I already had an idea about hardware design methodology and just
bought the books for language reference. However if you are going
to get started without hardware and using a simulator as your primary
design entry platform, you need to understand the difference between
sythesizable and non-synthesizable code, or you will have a big
shock the first time you decide to try your design out in hardware.

As for development boards, if you don't need too much I/O to
start with you might look at the XP2 Brevia kit from Lattice.
You can download the free ispLever starter software from Lattice
and a branded version of Aldec's simulation environment. I
think more people are used to Modelsim for simulation, though.

Regards,
Gabor

Wed Aug 18, 2010 5:07 pm   

On Aug 18, 2:56 pm, Gabor <ga...@alacron.com> wrote:

Ok, thanks for pointing that out. I guess that's why its important to
have a hands on approach.

These books seems to get a lot of god reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-VHDL-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185317/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282133861&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/FPGA-Prototyping-Verilog-Examples-Spartan-3/dp/0470185325/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282133861&sr=8-8


Only $29!

Wed Aug 18, 2010 6:33 pm   

Dinçay Akçören <dincay_at_gmail.com> writes:


Good point. In fact, there seems to be a shortage of Cyclone III
boards in the market, at least cheap ones with some devices on board.
Terasic's DE0 seems to be the only one? Then there is Arrow's Bemicro
which is certainly cheap (at least in the US), but all it has are a
few LEDs. Good thing is that there's an 80-pin edge connector on the
board, but again very little to plug into it.

Wed Aug 18, 2010 7:21 pm   

On 08/18/2010 01:38 AM, rupertlssmith_at_googlemail.com wrote:

As mentioned, the ISE environment is a shell for the command-line tools.
One thing I like about it is that with a bit of digging you can find
the command line used to invoke the tool, which means that you can use
ISE to help you write your makefile when you get serious about
production code.

The term 'compiler' means something different in HDL than in a
programming language. With HDL you either simulate or synthesize. They
are different and essential steps.

Simulation is just that -- there's a tool that runs the HDL or that
compiles it to a runnable program, that simulates the design on your
workstation. Simulation isn't just a cool geeky thing -- it's an
essential step to making sure your design is working.

There are open-source simulators out there, but the FPGA companies are
pretty tight with their synthesis algorithms (and even the mapping
between the bit files and the FPGA functions), so you won't find any
open-source synthesizers.

Synthesis takes the HDL that it can understand and do something with --
and that isn't all of the HDL -- and makes a design that will do what
the HDL specifies. It usually needs an additional "constraint file"
that lets it know about timing constraints, what signal goes to what
pin, etc. In software build terms the constraint file is sorta kinda
maybe a linker script, only different. Synthesis takes a _long_ time,
and the result is a file that goes onto the FPGA where many informative
signals are obscured -- hence the usefulness of the simulation step.


The FPGA is soldered down to the board. During early development you
fire things up and write bit files directly to the chip (at least in the
Xilinx workflow) with a JTAG programmer. FPGA chips (at least those
that don't have on-board PROM) are capable of loading configurations
from EEPROM, and most development boards will have a suitable EEPROM
that you can load your bit file onto so the board will come up by itself.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

Wed Aug 18, 2010 10:12 pm   

rupertlssmith_at_googlemail.com <rupertlssmith_at_googlemail.com> wrote:


In learning to use FPGAs, you need to learn both logic design
and (usually) either verilog or VHDL. They are often described
in different books, but you need both.

If you already know logic design (maybe from the 74xx TTL days)
then you need a good book on either verilog or VHDL.

Unfortunately I don't know any logic design books to recommend,
but maybe others do.

-- glen

Thu Aug 19, 2010 12:06 am   

You don't need to spend a lot of money to start with. Take your choice
of 4 FPGA vendors on our Polmaddie series
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/polmaddie/polmaddie_family.html which are
supported by either free or low cost tools from the relevant vendor.
You can do some practical playing before you move on to something more
advanced.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On 17 Aug, 18:07, "rupertlssm...@googlemail.com"
<rupertlssm...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Thu Aug 19, 2010 1:17 am   

On 8/17/2010 8:43 PM, Jonathan Bromley wrote:

post's IP (NNTP-Posting-Host: 213.15.253.202) resolves to something
called IBM regus UK. Whatever that is. Seems to be some kind of
training. I would suggest that 'Rupert' could be best served by asking
his trainers the answer to his query. Especially if the prices listed
match the course 'Rupert' is on. Anyway, IBM regus has gotta be better
than Doulos, right?

Cheers, Syms.

Thu Aug 19, 2010 11:00 am   

On Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:54:45 +0100, Michael Kellett wrote:


I have a copy of Pong Chu's "FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples -
(Spartan-3 version)" mentioned above (ISBN: 987-0-470-18531-5) and it
seems to be a pretty thorough starting point for a newcomer with
synthesis aspirations. It's perhaps a little narrow, and focusses on
Xilinx examples but it's probably what I'd have started with if I'd
spotted it at the time.

I started out with the well-known "VHDL Programming by Example" (ISBN:
978-0-07-049944-7) by Douglas Perry which is a more thorough explanation
of VHDL (i.e. not limited to the subset of VHDL that may be synthesised
as Chu's book tends to be). That said, it is slower going. Its index is
rather better than the Chu (which is one page), making it handier for
looking up bits of syntax.

I have also been reading "Reconfigurable Computing" -- essentially a
collection of contributions from many authors on the subject, covering
everything from the internal processes of FPGA synthesisers (at length)
to application design techniques all the way to advanced topics like
genetic design and the future of FPGAs and nanotechnology. It's edited
by Scott Huack and André Dehon (ISBN 978-0-12-370522-. It's a bit of a
tome but very, very broad.

So IMVHO (YMMV), plump for the Chu (VHDL version .


Andrew
0xADF