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Learning FPGA

danielpgleason

Does anyone know of any good learning resources about how to start learning FPGA? I've been a software engineer for several years and the FPGA world is quite new to me. I'm trying to implement RMII but have been struggling a lot. I purchased a logic analyzer but I don't know what I'm looking at. I need something that will tell me how to properly understand and read datasheets, know how to debug signals, how to understand what VHDL is good and what is bad. How to read RTL generations..Etc

I'm starting from the beginning. Any resources or materials are greatly appreciated. 

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  • Hi, it's great that you are looking into FPGAs. It's a steep learning curve, there area a lot of topics to cover and depending on the FPGA vendor you might have easier/hard time with the tools.

    I'd recommend starting with Xilinx/AMD devices as the tools are a bit "easier" to navigate, and the documentation is ample.

    1. I'd suggest downloading Vivado from the AMD website and start exploring it a bit by writing some simple VHDL code, making a test bench for it and synthesizing the design.
        This is a good starting point as you can see how your code works, without wasting time of HW debugging.

    2. While doing 1, explore the VHDL language, the best resource is the "VHDL golden reference guide", also sites like vhdlwhiz.
         It is quite different from the programming languages in a sense that you have to think "hardware", and not just a list of commands. 

    3. Once you get the basic idea of the language you can start with some simple designs - UART, SPI, etc.
         At this point, you can implement the design on your FPGA and observe it with your logic analyser to test whether it works as expected.  

    4. Finally, there are also plenty of IPs  (intellectual Property, i.e. like a library) provided by the vendors, including virtual probes and analysers and ever RMII.
        To ge to know these, you simply read through the manuals for the respective IP.

    Good luck with it, don't hesitate to ask questions Slight smile

        
     

  • in reply to dhmarinov

    What do you think about Altera FPGAs? Are they also well documented?

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  • in reply to michaelkellett

    Just remembered, one of the examples that comes with the Microphase Artix dev board (see third link above) has a bare metal to RMII interface.

    This is NOT the place to start learning about FPGAs  - try something simpler first.

    SPI is much, much easier.

    MK

  • in reply to danielpgleason

    Altera FPGAs are well documented and at the lower and simpler end have some advantages over AMD/Xilinx.

    They have a wider range of low end parts and some of these are available on very attractively priced dev boards. There are many Altera FPGAs still available in TQFP packages which makes the attractive for low cost prototyping.

    For a complete beginner I would recommend Lattice or Efinix FPGAs.

    Small Lattice FPGAs are cheap and very cheap dev boards are avaialble. The Lattice tools and workflow for the simple chips is much easier to get started with than Altera or Xilinx. If you care about this there are Open Source tools for the small Lattice chips (I haven't used them so can't comment on ease of use.)

    I find the Efinix chips to be good cheap and the tools OK but harder work than Lattice.

    Another option is Gowin, very cheap boards, very cheap parts if you want to but  a lot but less easy tools.

    Here's a really cheap Altera baord, lot smore on Aliexpress and you will need  a "Byte Blaster" to program it. You can download the Altera tools for free..

    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008090630134.html

    Here's a Lattice board with an Ethernet port and a rather bigger Lattice FPGA. The iceNano boards are maybe easier to get started with but cost more for a lot less FPGA. You will need a programmer for the ECP based board.

    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008611836768.html

    This is quite a nice Xilinx board (an I've actually bought and used these and they are quite good - documentation and support is OK, not brilliant, bet you can get schematics and examples that work (you will need to use a translator on the comments in the examples unless you can read Chinese))

    https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005252087623.html

    MK