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

There's a simple CPLD project here that I had a lot of fun working on, in case it helps provide ideas:

Programmable Logic Project: Pseudo-Random Noise Generator

CPLDs and FPGAs are great for signal generation.

There was additional fun attaching some analog circuitry to it, in order to generate an analog noise signal:

Pseudo-Random Noise; Using it and How to Create it

That second part was based around an 'Art of Electronics' chapter, basically the authors had described a system using discrete logic gates. However with the CPLD, and more modern op-amps, it was possible to increase the noise bandwidth of the original design by speeding it up, and make it smaller/cheaper too, through the advantages of CPLDs (Coolrunner 2 by Xilinx in this case).

For the free CPLD programmer, a BeagleBone Black (BBB) was used:

BBB - FPGA / CPLD Programmer for the BeagleBone Black

Personally I just don't know enough of hardware and where to get started with so many other projects on the go I keep putting it off looking into it more.  Certainly will be in the future but as of right now I am not confident enough to get involved in it at the moment without more homework.

I've never been really fully satisfied with any books concerning FPGAs, I've probably gone through half a dozen books on a couple of languages (HDLs) - they are quite expensive I feel, so not really an impulse purchase : ( The courses are also expensive and therefore out of reach for many unless it comes up in a job, and unlike software programming, one needs to also know digital electronics. Having said all that, some uni courses are pretty good though, so if you can find some, they are worth a read to get started. And then picking a board and trying some simple projects.

These notes are very good:

E2.1 Digital Electronics 2 - Peter Cheung

There are notes there on digital electronics, and also a few on VHDL (one of the popular languages for creating a CPLD or FPGA project). All of them are well worth downloading if you're interested.

hlipka  wrote:

 

Actel has the e.g. the ProAsic3 family for which they claim instant-on functionality, but I did not read through all data sheets to verify that.

I've used these a lot in the past. They are instant on. The flash in these devices is part of the configuration structure of each cell and as soon as the device is powered on, clocks running and it's out of reset it's up and running. If you are talking combinatorial logic, then you don't even need the clocks, as soon as the power is within spec it's working. This is one of the reasons Actel (now MicroSemi) are used so much in aerospace applications.

Best Regards,

Rachael

Like others ... the learning curve for them.

While I can see they have great potential and are much more suited for some things, IMO they are one piece of hardware for a purpose ...like a regulator is to power.

I know johnbeetem has great experience with them, so maybe he can provide some really good insights.

Mark

Thank you, rachaelp and Workshopshed, you've convinced me to make 2018 the year I learn about FPGAs

If it's any consolation, I haven't actually purchased any FPGA boards 

I'm scared to count the number of others ... but zero FPGA.

I have an FPGA board from MicroSemi sitting on my desk... its been there probably 6 months now. What's holding me back, resources. I have attempted before to learn VHDL but at that point it was all in simulation, no real hands on. On top of that the teacher was a video that was mono tone...

If I had a good teaching aid I would be very interested in learning to use a FPGA or a CPLD.

Kas

Peter Cheung is a good lecturer or at least he was last time I took his class over 20 years ago.

Looks like things have come on a bit since my day. We did not use any hardware description languages back then although I was aware of some people in the department using them.

Now it depends on what do you mean about "building the next project".

Do you mean building the project till the final stage or do you mean building a prototype in order to test the concept of your future device/product. The second is easier as there are a lot of development boards that can be used for this purpose and FPGA manufacturers provide some free tools to start using these devices. Prototyping/designing with FPGAs has become easier and this is demonstrated by many students participating in FPGA design competitions (ex. Digilent Design Contest, Xilinx Open Hardware University design contest – just started, InnovateFPGA Contest).

FPGAs are good for prototyping and not only for devices that will be built using FPGAs. Using today FPGAs you can build an entire SoC, you can try and explore different architectures for your system as you can reconfigure FPGA many times.

As other said these devices now get packed with a lot of resources and it could be a waste to use them only to light up some LEDs or send the value read from a sensor. But for those who are starting to do embedded system design based on FPGAs, this could be the starting project, a project that is familiar to them, maybe from previous projects developed with microcontrollers.

One thing that stops me starting a new project with an FPGA (and not only) it the size of designing tools and their permanent change that needs updating or even reinstalling the tools. This sometimes means also upgrading your computer and your OS. For someone who is not working with FPGAs on a daily basis, you can find yourself in the situation that for starting a new project with FPGA you must install a new version of tools.  The entire change of the toolset (as it was passing from Xilinx Foundation to Xilinx ISE/WebPack and then to Xilinx Vivado) implies also restarting the learning curve.

I am expecting something like what happened in the microcontroller area (online compilers, ex. mbed), the advent of the online development tools for FPGAs, so you don't have to occupy Gigs of hard disk space with designing tools that you use just for a (small) project and spend time with reinstalling the developing tools every x months to have resolved the last software bugs of the tools.