Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 100 replies
  • Subscribers 2757 subscribers
  • Views 12328 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

What's Stopping You Building Your Next Project with an FPGA? (Please, Don't Blame the Cost!)

rscasny

The community does a ton of projects with MCUs. If they do the job for you, that's great. But the element14 community is about learning, experimenting and roadtesting. In this spirit, I am proposing that you should try building your next project with an FPGA (SoC), if it suits the application, of course. What's stopping you? Oh, some members have voiced the cost issue. Granted, some FPGAs do cost a lot. But chip manufacturers are rolling out economical chipsets that most makers, pro-makers or experienced hobbyists can afford. (If you can't, then apply to a RoadTest and if you win you can get a dev board for FREE.) I think FPGA / SoCs will move into a more important place for electronic designers, especially for IoT applications. Perhaps it's time to experiement with one. What's stopping you?

 

Here's a link to a current roadtest:Digilent ARTY S7 Dev Board (Xilinx Spartan 7)   Apply today!

 

Randall Scasny

RoadTest Program Manager

Parents

  • I started to use FPGAs about 6-7 years ago.  I've read through the comments above and I would like to bring up two thoughts:

    1. Motivation to start using FPGAs would be the application type: building something that cannot be built with a microcontroller like for example video applications.

    2. It looks like some people are not attracted to start learning VHDL or Verilog. Well, if you are familiar with circuit design you can design complete FPGA applications without writing any line of code.  You can just draw schematics using the available logic block symbols in the tool library and create a fully functional schematic based FPGA application like this.   I have done this on Xilinx and Altera/Intel FPGAs using the vendor provided free design tools.

    Anyone wanted to start using FPGAs feel free to contact me for more details on how I started,

    Cosmin

Reply

  • I started to use FPGAs about 6-7 years ago.  I've read through the comments above and I would like to bring up two thoughts:

    1. Motivation to start using FPGAs would be the application type: building something that cannot be built with a microcontroller like for example video applications.

    2. It looks like some people are not attracted to start learning VHDL or Verilog. Well, if you are familiar with circuit design you can design complete FPGA applications without writing any line of code.  You can just draw schematics using the available logic block symbols in the tool library and create a fully functional schematic based FPGA application like this.   I have done this on Xilinx and Altera/Intel FPGAs using the vendor provided free design tools.

    Anyone wanted to start using FPGAs feel free to contact me for more details on how I started,

    Cosmin

Children
No Data