What FPGA content would you like to see?

R Bell wrote:

 

I'd be really interested to know what the absolute lowest budget ways would be of getting started again - e.g. the cheaper parts, which vendors supply free software tools and where possible if a homemade programmer can be made up.

Always happy to promote my own poll: Not-as-expensive FPGA Boards   There are a bunch of links to less-expensive FPGA boards, almost all of which have on-board USB programmers.

The main FPGA vendors all have free-as-in-beer software for their less expensive parts.  You only need to spend money to get support for high-end parts, and sometimes to get additional software capability.  Lattice iCE40 has both free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-freedom software.

DAB wrote:

 

There is an upcoming CEC training session on programming FPGA devices at Digikey.

 

You might want to check out what they have available.

 

DAB

Here's a link: https://www.designnews.com/continuing-education-center

Course runs from 9/11/17 through 9/15/17, each day with a 45 minute lecture plus chat.  It sounds like a decent syllabus, but it doesn't say which FPGA family it's going to use or whether there's a specific board.

John,

What a great article and additional community comments. It was just what I need, thank you.

The vendors have code for soft processors.

The Altera one is called NIOS. Downside is that I think you have to pay for licence if you ship it as part of a product.

Xilinx have the PicoBlaze (8 bit) and MicroBlaze (32 bit) - they seem to be free for development but again may have licence restrictions (I haven't looked in detail).

I don't have any experience of either, so can't say how easy they are to use or what the supporting toolchains are like.

If you had a look at the code for the PicoBlaze it would give you an idea of what's involved with a very simple microcontroller - that will be about as simple as it gets, unless you did a calculator-style 4-bit processor. Copy Intel's 4004 maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_4004

Alternatively there are SoC type FPGA's which have a whole bunch of stuff including Ethernet, Memory controllers, an ARM core etc all tightly coupled with the FPGA fabric. Something like the MicroSemi SmartFusion2 range: https://www.microsemi.com/products/fpga-soc/soc-fpga/smartfusion2#product-tables

Then do what makes most sense in traditional software on the ARM core and build custom hardware in the FPGA part for where this can really help out.

attention: opinion coming:

to learn VHDL or Verilog, it may be easier to go for a plain FPGA. That 'll force you to think in hardware. That by itself is confusing enough for a person coming from the processor world.

Once you add modules or controllers inside the IC and use that as your learning platform, the border gets more fuzzy and that isn't an advantage in this kind of new paradigm learning cycle.

You may also fall back easier towards the controller to perform something and miss the opportunity to come up with a FPGA solution.

That's it. I'll get my coat

Jan Cumps wrote:

 

attention: opinion coming:

It's good to have opinions and I think you are right. I think for learning about FPGA's it's probably better to focus on devices which are just FPGA's and nothing more. That forces you to do as much as possible in the hardware

Jan Cumps wrote:

 

That's it. I'll get my coat

You don't need to get your coat, your opinion wasn't in any way controversial IMO

attention: contrary opinion coming:

But what are you learning for? If it's just academic study, then sure, keep it pure and simple. If it's to do real designs then you have to tackle these kind of issues and understand them, and that means dealing with the device in the way an engineer (like Rachael) would. Partitioning a design is all part of what you should be learning, not just the language syntax.

You have a coat? Don't tell the management or they'll realise that they're paying you too much.

Writing and simulating VHDL/Verilog Program using Test bench is all different compared to porting and testing the same on actual FPGA.. So its more interesting to see some content on availability and use of very low cost FPGA kits (At price around Arduino Uno) so people can get started with FPGA as quickly as possible..

Thanks,

RAVI

Ravi,

The cheapest FPGAs cost the multitude of the ATmega on the Arduino, (e14 shop, ICE40HX1K-TQ144ICE40HX1K-TQ144, more than 4 € in bulk purchase).

You'll very likely need a more expensive PCB too, even to route this simplest one, also adding to the cost.

Then there's external flash needed to persist your design (a component not on the Arduino), and a PSU that can deliver the different required voltage levels (also not on the Arduino, they don't need several voltage rails).

The exercise is orders of magnitude more difficult than an Arduino board, and the market may be less than 1% of the number of Arduinos sold. The only way someone can achieve what you're suggesting is by loosing money?