Poll: What Are You Doing This Summer? How About 'A Summer of FPGAs'? What Do You Want to Learn?

I had a similar issue when I began learning Verilog. Yes, there is a lot of material in the web, but most of it is of very little use as learning material.

These are 2 links that I found kinda useful

https://www.nandland.com/

The ZipCPU by Gisselquist Technology

There is  a lot of stuff on the web:

I Googled Verilog Tutorials and got 1.65 million hits (VHDL Tutorials only got 1.6 million)

Obviously a lot of those hits will be pretty useless but there is plenty of good stuff there too.

The kind of material where I think E14 has been useful in the past is where a complete project is presented in sufficient detail to allow others to understand and modify or replicate it.

MK

Hello,

There are lot of tutorials on getting started with FPGAs.

But there are no more tutorials on how to code effectively using verilog, so I think it would be better if some RTL development is included.

Well, this sounds really interesting and must-have event during the summer!

There has been a lot of road tests and project14 contests involving FPGAs in the past.

Probably this is the right time to showcase some of them and build new projects from those who already have the hardware.

I personally feel the DE0 nano to be very user-friendly to start with, to building decent projects with the FPGA.

If there is a contest clubbed with this, would love to participate!

My attempt to teach FPGAs from scratch:

Prototyping with FPGAs - Part 1 - Basics

Prototyping with FPGAs - Part 2 - Combinational Logic with Xilinx ISE on Spartan 6 FPGA

Prototyping with FPGAs - Part 3 - Sequential Logic with Quartus Prime on Cyclone-IV FPGA

Prototyping with FPGAs - Part 4 - Combinational Logic vs. Sequential Logic with Vivado on Artix-7 FPGA

Prototyping with FPGAs - Final Project - Pong Game

Looking forward to seeing a summer full of learning and fun!

Yeshvanth

I think the Aurduino people made a few serious mistakes with that product.

It doesn't really fit into the Arduino system very well and the software support was very poor indeed at launch.

To do anything useful with the FPGA you need to use the Altera toolset which is a very long way from what a typical Wiring user might be used to.

(Actually I quite like the Altera tools - this is not a criticism of them).

If you want to get into playing with Cyclones there are much cheaper and more direct ways to get there.

MK

Definitely needs an entry-level track to try and encourage a wider range of people to create and ultimately share project ideas using them.

Would be good to see a mixture of stand-alone logic device type applications as well as applications enhancing an existing microcontroller design.

Given the large Arduino community, I'm surprised that the likes of the MKR Vidor 4000 based on the SAMD21 / Cyclone devices hasn't proved to be more popular in this area.

My point exactly.

We have a large number of people on element 14 who might want to use FPGA, but are either unfamiliar with the devices and the tools needed to make them work.

I would like to see the full process from idea to implementation showing the decision points, an estimate on time involved with each step, and skill level you would need before attempting the build.

I am an experienced systems engineer and have worked with bit slice technology, but it has been a while since I used any of those devices.

To pick up a FPGA device and use it will require a lot of time (my perception) so I need to be convinced that the end result is worth the investment in time and effort.

I understand that the vendors would like a new market for their products, but from my perspective, they are a solution looking for an application.

If they want more people to use the FPGA, then they need to go a long way to educate even experience engineers to properly use their devices.

If your first experience with the device is bad or an unpleasant experience, you will probably not use it again.

DAB

DAB  wrote:

 

Part of this discussion needs to be the tools required and the time involved with becoming proficient with those tools.

 

I think this would be hard to narrow down since each FPGA vendor uses a different set of tools and some FPGAs, such as a Xilinx MPSoC, have more functionality beyond a standard FPGA since they include ARM cores or other non FPGA chip.  Historically, FPGA development was based around VHDL or Verilog, but these days some of that is even being abstracted away where an FPGA can be programed in either C++ or even Python.  It does seem that FPGA development is getting more Software friendly rather than the traditional Hardware only focus.

As far as time involved to become proficient with the tools, that will really depend on the individual and their background.

At least that is the way I see it.

I think what has been missing so far with FPGA devices is a good process for how you determine if you need an FPGA and then a process for choosing the right FPGA for your application.

Part of this discussion needs to be the tools required and the time involved with becoming proficient with those tools.

DAB

Too many(tm) years ago, I started a FPGA project as part of a Xilinx ARTY-S7 FPGA board roadtest, but never finished it.

This might be the motivation to pick it up again. It is a Radio Rewind Button, a device that records the current radio program in a big loop memory and when the button is pressed, it jumps back in time. Could be helpful if you missed the start of your favorite song or the news by some time. It is also documented here:

https://hackaday.io/project/112183-rrb-the-radio-rewind-button

- W.