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Thomas W

Sun Mar 24 2013, 09:47PM

Registered Member #3324 Joined: Sun Oct 17 2010, 06:57PM
Location:
Posts: 1276

Hey guys,
ive recently had a big interest in FPGAs (Field-Programmable-Gate-Array)
was wondering if anyone has any good information and tips about them that could be useful

thanks!

Dr. Slack

Mon Mar 25 2013, 08:18AM

Registered Member #72 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 08:29AM
Location: UK St. Albans
Posts: 1659

It so much depends on what 'an interest' means. How deep do you want to wade into the swamp? How much money do you want to spend?

If I was about to try out some FPGA stuff, I'd use this

Free fully featured VHDL compilation tools available on the web, and suitable hardware to target for $90. It's about the cheapest 'grown up' dev kit I've seen. You don't have to use the 32 bit soft core processor, just use it as an FPGA, but depending on what you're doing, it can be very handy. Just goole 'fpga development kits', there's a zilliion out there, and it's easy to spend a lot more, and often a lot more on older technology, and kits with lower capabilties.

Now if you don't want to use a dev kit, but want to start soldering a chip, and figuring our how to set bits in config memory to enable functions, that's wading deep deep into the swamp, good luck, life's too short.

Nicko

Mon Mar 25 2013, 09:52AM

Registered Member #1334 Joined: Tue Feb 19 2008, 04:37PM
Location: Nr. London, UK
Posts: 615

Elektor have been doing a series on just his for the last 3 months - they have their own cheap dev board that looks like a USB stick.

http://www.elektor.com/news/afraid-of-fpgas-elektor-has-the-solution.2327621.lynkx

Thomas W

Mon Mar 25 2013, 08:22PM

Registered Member #3324 Joined: Sun Oct 17 2010, 06:57PM
Location:
Posts: 1276

really its just a interesting topic, im basicly assembling a load of basic-medium and advanced projects together, making them in a professional manner and writing up about them documented, im going to put them in a suitcase and bring them to any interviews to gain interest and such to help me in my career

klugesmith

Tue Mar 26 2013, 05:22PM

Registered Member #2099 Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1716

__=|(:3)-|--{__ wrote ...
Hey guys,
ive recently had a big interest in FPGAs (Field-Programmable-Gate-Array)
was wondering if anyone has any good information and tips about them that could be useful

Choose a project where an FPGA makes sense. Pretty much any digital function that must be performed faster than you can do with firmware in a microcontroller.
Could be as simple as a combinatorial logic equation, or as fancy as DSP functions or high speed pattern generators.
Wide multiply-accumulate operations and/or RAM accesses every 5 nanoseconds are no problem.
For large FPGAs you can get microcontroller cores as soft macros.

I can give you a board with an Altera Stratix II FPGA, if you can obtain the development software.

Thomas W

Tue Mar 26 2013, 06:15PM

Registered Member #3324 Joined: Sun Oct 17 2010, 06:57PM
Location:
Posts: 1276

im interested, what is the name of the software and how much will the board run me back?

klugesmith

Tue Mar 26 2013, 07:16PM

Registered Member #2099 Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1716

Altera's regular FPGA development software is called Quartus,
and annual license renewal is expensive.

See if you can download a demo version or a student version.
Ideally it would just restrict the complexity of your designs.
If it allows you to compile and simulate a design,
but won't create a file for configuring the physical FPGA,
then you'll have no use for the board (which would be sent for cost of postage).

[edit] Looks like this plan is a non-starter, sorry 'bout that.
The free version of Altera software

does not support the Stratix series of FPGA's.
The boards I had in mind are a temporary instrument design of mine, with one Stratix II FPGA.
They've served their purpose and will eventually be scrapped, but the design includes some details
to facilitate stand-alone operation in hobby projects.

That free software does support Cyclone FPGA's. You can buy those on ebay or from Digikey, et al, as loose chips or on development boards.

You could do your logic design in verilog or VHDL, which are valuable and portable skills. If you configure part of the Cyclone as an embedded NIOS processor, and write software for -that-, you'll be ahead of me. But first try configuring the Cyclone as something like a two-input NAND gate or a hex inverter. In Verilog.

Carbon_Rod

Wed Mar 27 2013, 02:05AM

Registered Member #65 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155

Generally, I usually recommend people start with something simple, inexpensive, and well documented.
Xilinx XC2C64A CoolRunner2 (cheaper $12 boards are on ebay as they were used for mod chips at one time)

Bus pirate v3 (XSVF player mode, about $24)
Note the knock-offs on ebay use incompatible chips with the built-in bootloader, but can be flashed with a PicKit2+

Xilinx and Altera both make various products, but people generally find Xilinx is much less costly to build on.
In my opinion, Altera's compiler suite has a fundamental disadvantage in that they try to constantly extort IP library fees from users even after buying their product. Additionally, many of their dev kits chips are SRAM based, and require a special external boot rom.

Cheers,

Steve Conner

Wed Mar 27 2013, 10:40AM

Registered Member #30 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706

A Spartan eval board used with Xilinx's free ISE Webpack software is the easiest, cheapest way to get into FPGAs. We use a FPGA in one of our products, to do some high-speed buffering and data formatting. The main processor would grind away inefficiently at this, but a cheap low-end FPGA does it effortlessly. I managed to get everything that I needed done with Webpack. I prototyped it using a Spartan-3E board from Digilent, and used the XC3S100E in production.

Carbon Rod's suggestion is also a good one, but those are CPLDs, not FPGAs. The distinction is quite blurred nowadays, as you can program the Xilinx CPLDs with Webpack in the same way as you would a FPGA. They're just smaller and less capable than FPGAs. (but on the other hand, fewer pins makes them easier to solder to a board for your hobby project

)

WaveRider

Wed Mar 27 2013, 09:02PM

Registered Member #29 Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 09:00AM
Location: Hasselt, Belgium
Posts: 500

I've used the Altera Cyclone II and III FPGAs in a couple of software radio projects to do front-end processing. The free Web version of Quartus II was used. These chips have a version that comes in a 240 pin QFP package that is hobbyist-solderable (with some care and a good magnifier; they were chosen for this reason).

Carbon rod is correct that Altera tries to squeeze money out of designers for certain IP modules. However, you can learn a lot by avoiding these costly "black boxes" and implementing your own signal-processing elements. There are also lots of free IP modules available that you can build on.

My advice: get yourself one of the many FPGA evaluation boards and start programming it! Start with implementing the basics: gates, counters, memory elements, adders, etc. Play around with timing and pipelining. Play with the schematic capture and see how it generates VHDL/Verilog. Learn how to write VHDL/Verilog modules. Learn how to use the simulator in the toolchain. This will help greatly with troubleshooting. There is a substantial learning curve, but you will be amply rewarded! Even an inexpensive FPGA can handle amazing data throughputs compared to a traditional microprocessor.

Take a look at this fellow's site

. He lists some interesting projects to try out and makes recommendations for eval boards.

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