Getting started with FPGA's. Need advice on where/how to.

Hello,

I have minimal to zero experience/knowlwdge in FPGA. But I am graduating
soon and hope to go in to industry where FPGA's would be used massively. 
SO I want to get started with FPGA's. I would greatly appreciate if
someone give me some guidance as to where and how to start to this. I am
not looking for a in-depth knowledge. I want to learn up to a extent where
I will not be surprised when I start working in a design lab or something.

If somebody could tell me;
1) Best starters guide/book.
2) Best starter kit.
I was looking at
http://www.xilinx.com/products/devkits/HW-SPAR3A-SK-UNI-G.htm . But I have
no idea what this product will do. Anybody can let me know if this is a
good starter kit? what kind of things I will be able to do with this at
HOME? I do not have access to anyother equipment other than a computer.
Would it be a silly idea to get it?

Any advice is very much appreciated. 
Thank you very much.

On Sep 20, 8:04&#4294967295;pm, "m26k9" <maduranga.liyan...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have minimal to zero experience/knowlwdge in FPGA. But I am graduating
> soon and hope to go in to industry where FPGA's would be used massively.
> SO I want to get started with FPGA's. I would greatly appreciate if
> someone give me some guidance as to where and how to start to this. I am
> not looking for a in-depth knowledge. I want to learn up to a extent where
> I will not be surprised when I start working in a design lab or something.
>
> If somebody could tell me;
> 1) Best starters guide/book.
> 2) Best starter kit.
> I was looking athttp://www.xilinx.com/products/devkits/HW-SPAR3A-SK-UNI-G.htm. But I have
> no idea what this product will do. Anybody can let me know if this is a
> good starter kit? what kind of things I will be able to do with this at
> HOME? I do not have access to anyother equipment other than a computer.
> Would it be a silly idea to get it?
>
> Any advice is very much appreciated.
> Thank you very much.

Buy a starter kit.  The FPGA manufacturers do there best to make it
easy to user their products.

Peter Nachtwey

"m26k9" <maduranga.liyanage@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:e5GdnbzwG5_UcCvXnZ2dnUVZ_sCdnZ2d@giganews.com...
> Hello,
>
> I have minimal to zero experience/knowlwdge in FPGA. But I am graduating
> soon and hope to go in to industry where FPGA's would be used massively.
> SO I want to get started with FPGA's. I would greatly appreciate if
> someone give me some guidance as to where and how to start to this. I am
> not looking for a in-depth knowledge. I want to learn up to a extent where
> I will not be surprised when I start working in a design lab or something.
>
> If somebody could tell me;
> 1) Best starters guide/book.
> 2) Best starter kit.
> I was looking at
> http://www.xilinx.com/products/devkits/HW-SPAR3A-SK-UNI-G.htm . But I have
> no idea what this product will do. Anybody can let me know if this is a
> good starter kit? what kind of things I will be able to do with this at
> HOME? I do not have access to anyother equipment other than a computer.
> Would it be a silly idea to get it?
>
> Any advice is very much appreciated.
> Thank you very much.

If you merely buy "the book" and "the starter kit" you won't learn much. You 
can certainly browse the web to learn what an FPGA is and what its uses are.

My experience has been that the only way to really learn something new is to 
have a specific project in mind and then use the specific technology to 
implement it.

Have you selected a senior project yet?

Bob
-- 
== All google group posts are automatically deleted due to spam == 

Thank you very much for the replies.
There is no particular project I have in mind or need to do. This is for
myself to get some experience in to what FPGA's are, what they can do and
how to do them.

For example, I recently bought a Arduino development kit. And I could many
intersting (but rather small) things on it. They also have lots of projects
that I can try out easily and get a feel for it, before I can start doing
my own projects. 
Is there anything FPGA's can be used to do at home? Like a hobby projects?
Or am I way out of line with FPGA's?

Thank you very much.

>Thank you very much for the replies.
>There is no particular project I have in mind or need to do. This is for
>myself to get some experience in to what FPGA's are, what they can do
and
>how to do them.
>
>For example, I recently bought a Arduino development kit. And I could
many
>intersting (but rather small) things on it. They also have lots of
projects
>that I can try out easily and get a feel for it, before I can start
doing
>my own projects. 
>Is there anything FPGA's can be used to do at home? Like a hobby
projects?

So the dev kit will not teach you to pick components, nor will it teach
you to do the electronics design or PCB layout, but if the components
chosen for you are a good fit, then you'll be able to learn their ins and
outs, as well as a workflow.  What is your level of experience with either
VHDL or Verilog?  Once you're ok with syntax (which can be learned with
combinational circuits, such as switches feeding LEDs through some
user-defined logic), you'll want to try state machines.  After you've got
that, I'd suggest the first thing I worked on:  a UART for the onboard 232
port.  Get it working in simulation, then have it echo back (inchar+1)%256
in hardware, testing it with a terminal program on your PC.  The tricky
part is recovering the clock; some hints can be found in most
microcontroller datasheets.  If you can do this, try some custom packet
format layered on top.  Keep building functionality, but test, test, test!

I emphasize:  simulate all your designs before downloading them to the
chip.  You don't get an ICE like you have with microcontrollers.  Testing
involves TRYING to break your own code with stimuli.  It is nearly
impossible to debug your design on the chip, and you can get weird results
if you're, for example, not meeting setup/hold, which is frequently only a
warning.  There are a lot of gotchas with timing; a document that might
help to skim, even though a lot of the material is fairly advanced, is:

http://klabs.org/mapld04/tutorials/vhdl/presentations/methodologies.ppt

Using the add-on "Modelsim" (if you can) to do simulation will make it
easier to move between FPGA vendors, but a builtin simulator does work (at
least for Altera, the only one I've recently messed with).

I think that once you can do all of this thoroughly and reliably, you'll
have a good idea of what to do next with the peripherals available on that
board.

Thank you very much Michael.
My understanding of VHDL or Verilog is nothing. That is why I wanted to
get a start on this area because I believe it is very important that I
learn this. I think I should start with some introductory guide before
getting my hands on a starter kit. 
If you could recommend a good guide for the absolute beginner that would
be great. I guess even if I get the Xilinx starter kit I probably will have
no idea what to do with it.

Thank you very much again.

m26k9 <maduranga.liyanage@gmail.com> wrote:
 
< I have minimal to zero experience/knowlwdge in FPGA. But I am graduating
< soon and hope to go in to industry where FPGA's would be used massively. 
< SO I want to get started with FPGA's. I would greatly appreciate if
< someone give me some guidance as to where and how to start to this. I am
< not looking for a in-depth knowledge. I want to learn up to a extent where
< I will not be surprised when I start working in a design lab or something.

Mostly you need to know digital logic design.  From that, FPGA is just
a newer (faster and cheaper) way to implement large digital logic
designs.

Imagine you owned a TTL factory, a wirewrap socket factory, 
and a machine to automatically wire up whatever design you
came up with.  What would you build?

Some of the currently popular projects are legacy systems.
I believe that there is an Apple II implemented for one (or more)
of the popular starter boards.  (I am not sure about the floppy
drive, though.)

-- glen

On Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:28:24 +0000, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> m26k9 <maduranga.liyanage@gmail.com> wrote:
>  
> < I have minimal to zero experience/knowlwdge in FPGA. But I am
> graduating < soon and hope to go in to industry where FPGA's would be
> used massively. < SO I want to get started with FPGA's. I would greatly
> appreciate if < someone give me some guidance as to where and how to
> start to this. I am < not looking for a in-depth knowledge. I want to
> learn up to a extent where < I will not be surprised when I start
> working in a design lab or something.
> 
> Mostly you need to know digital logic design.  From that, FPGA is just a
> newer (faster and cheaper) way to implement large digital logic designs.
> 
> Imagine you owned a TTL factory, a wirewrap socket factory, and a
> machine to automatically wire up whatever design you came up with.  What
> would you build?

Probably an FPGA factory, so I could do something useful with the result.

:-)

-- 
www.wescottdesign.com

>My understanding of VHDL or Verilog is nothing.

Ah.  Well, Altera has this "schematic capture" thing in their software
(maybe Xilinx does too?) where you can do most of the same stuff without
writing VHDL or Verilog, but you'll eventually need to learn a language to
be taken seriously.  There are books on it.  For sample code, you might
also try:

http://www.fpga4fun.com/

http://www.opencores.org/

(I have glanced at these, but not used them, so I don't know if they
work.)

On 21 Sep, 20:38, "Michael Plante" <michael.pla...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >My understanding of VHDL or Verilog is nothing.
>
> Ah. &#4294967295;Well, Altera has this "schematic capture" thing in their software
> (maybe Xilinx does too?) where you can do most of the same stuff without
> writing VHDL or Verilog, but you'll eventually need to learn a language to
> be taken seriously. &#4294967295;There are books on it. &#4294967295;For sample code, you might
> also try:
>
> http://www.fpga4fun.com/
>
> http://www.opencores.org/
>
> (I have glanced at these, but not used them, so I don't know if they
> work.)

Xilinx has schematic capture as well. It's best to forget it and use
VHDL or Verilog right from the start.

Leon