How to learn Electronics and Hardware-Design

[rudolf97]

Hello!

I am 16 years old and I am new to the forum.

I am very interessted in computers and how they work. And so I also want to know how to make my own hardware for example a graphics card.. I know a graphics card is very difficult and nothing for beginners. At the beginning I like to do easier stuff but only so you know in what direction the knowledge should go...

Is there any easy and inexpensive way to learn this?

Regards

[TimNJ]

I know the search function on this forum doesn't always turn up great results...however there are lots of other threads just like yours with lots of recommendations and wisdom.

That being said, if I were you, I'd purchase some good electronics learning books, some cheap/used test equipment, band a whole slew of parts. Then sit down and get to work!

When I was 13-14 or so I also had a great interest in computers. It's what made me interested in learning about the electronics involved. You speak of wanting to design a graphics card. Such a task would probably take you at least 10 years of dedicated learning (college might help) to get anywhere near being able to do high speed digital design.

Baby steps at first and soon things will start to make more and more sense.

[rudolf97]

Thank you for your response.

Yes books are a great idea.

And yes I know that a graphics card is a very big project. But in this case it should be an example for the subject I want to get into: hardware-design.

[lapm]

I would recomend books too and get some stuff to work with....

Electronics is very much reading datasheet, understanding what it says and then go and put that knoledge in use by building something that uses that new component... Or trying to figure out why something docent work in way you tought it would... Problem hunting is great teachers of us all...

Just to get start building you can get by with relatively cheap. Breadboard, throwhole components and cheap multimeter and powersupply (can use batteries for power)....

And lots of practise... 

[Dago]

One of the hardest parts when you are a newbie is to know what projects are suitable for your (current) skillset. Needless to say a graphics card is most likely not...

I have personally learned pretty much everything by being genuinely interested in whatever I decide to do and trying not to take the easy path (by just copying someone elses design) but to learn how everything works and design stuff myself. I think a good guideline for learning and selecting your projects is that unless you understand how every aspect of the project you are interested in works, then the project is too difficult for you. Then you just need to go through all the different topics you do not understand in small portions (and maybe make smaller related projects) and learn them.

All of us have been there done that, I remember one of my first bigger electronics projects was a solid-state tesla coil like 13 years ago. Without an oscilloscope. Or any other measurement instruments (except 5€ multimeter). Or much understanding of it at all. I did manage to get a few sparks off it (from the correct part of the device even!) but when it stopped working I had no idea what to do because I did not understand well enough how it works.

If you are interested in graphics card design then I suggest you start looking in to embedded programming. Start with something simple like Arduinos and make something with them. Then graduate onwards to ARMs or FPGA-design. Most important thing is that do and build stuff that you WANT to and that you find FUN to do. Just remember the difficulty part, it is never fun to fail and doing projects that are of a suitable level for you negates that risk.

If you are interested in how computers and CPUs and graphics cards work then I'll take a shot and recommend you this book: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Organization-Design-Fourth-Edition/dp/0123747503/ it might be a bit too difficult for you right now (or maybe not, since I do not know you or your skill level ) but it might be a good long term goal to read it and understand it. Something like Wikipedia is a good accompaniment, just look through all the terms you are not familiar with and try to understand them.

[bwat]

Is there any easy and inexpensive way to learn this?

There is no easy. If you want to do computer design then you can go from zero to designing your own CPUs in less than a year working full time. Working part-time would obviously take longer but you could still do it in a year if you were more focused  about your learning goals (e.g. one specific type of CPU - say pipelined RISC). The reason why I think this is possible is that there is

1) a good number of books out there and
2) I've done this myself.

You're 16 and you've got energy and desire so anything is possible. I don't mention graphics card development as there doesn't seem to be as many books for the beginner in that area.

A book I can recommend:
Mano, M. Morris, and Kime, Charles R. Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals. 2nd Edition. Prentice Hall, 2000.

This one looks good for complete beginners:
D. Harris, S. Harris. Digital Design and Computer Architecture, Morgan Kaufman.

[miguelvp]

I would choose a different path. Learn how to program and use current graphics cards as well as learn how those unified cores work. Learn about the graphics pipeline while learning about the hardware behind them as well.

For example use papers like this and dig deeper on what you don't understand.

http://www.geforce.com/Active/en_US/en_US/pdf/GeForce-GTX-680-Whitepaper-FINAL.pdf

Also look for competing technologies like PowerVRs approach

http://downloads.isee.biz/pub/files/igep-dsp-gst-framework-3_40_00/Graphics_SDK_4_05_00_03/GFX_Linux_SDK/OGLES/SDKPackage/Documentation/POWERVR%20MBX.Technology%20Overview.1.7f.External.pdf

and more alternatives:

http://renderingpipeline.com/graphics-literature/low-level-gpu-documentation/

The good thing is that you live in an era that has a lot of information at your fingertips

One thing that Nvidia uses are FPGAs to prototype their GPUs of course just for the architecture since the FPGA won't deliver the same speed at the ASIC. But if you google "nvidia fpga prototyping" you'll see more job offers from Nvidia than their use of FPGAs for prototyping. But you'll find some articles on what the use:

http://hothardware.com/News/Nvidia-Offers-Peak-Into-Advanced-Design-Evaluation

Then again that's just one vendor, others might have different approaches.


Edit, One more thing if you are serious on building graphics cards, make sure you put effort on vectors, matrices and quaternions. They look intimidating but they are really simple if you put the effort.

Computer graphics are not too complicated, pretty much is vector processing of unified vectors with lengths between 0.0 and 1.0, animations is just parent matrices applied to child matrices. Texture mapping is the same thing is mapping between 0 and 1 as a percentage of the texture. It's really very basic building blocks but done as such high speed that it can achieve a lot.

Then you have the whole realm of shaders that can do bump maps and other wonderful things that are more efficient that actually drawing triangles, but it is still vector multiplications.

I guess what I'm saying is learn matrices, vectors and quaternions and of course trigonometry, as far as math goes it's less complicated than stats or integrals/derivatives. You can't design the hardware unless you learn how it is used.

[rudolf97]

Thank you for your advices!

I think I am going to buy one of these books for beginners to get into the basics.
Because I speek german I hope translating and understanding it is not too difficult..

[bwat]

Get some book tips from people in German speaking countries. I've seen too many good technical books that don't have English translations. There'll be a gem of a book in German no doubt. There's little point making it harder for yourself. Mind you your English is a hell of a lot better than my German. You might not have much trouble with English language texts.

[rudolf97]

Yes, Englisch itself is no big problem, but special technical words/expressions are mostly difficult to understand.
I mean, I read a book about Physical Based Rendering and sometimes it is very hard to understand...

But I will look for a good book, I promise..