FPGA newbie - Where do I start?

[djsb]

Thanks,

Yes, I was going to mention your free E-book in my post but as the link is already embedded in the seeed link I didn't want to repeat it.

That's one of the reasons I bought the papilio, because of the forum and your book.

David.

[legacy]

I am not expert about fpga, just an hobbits, i have an intel Core Duo2 (i2) machine (IBM Thinkpad X61S @ 1600 Mhz / 2 Gbyte ram) loaded with Linux and Windows XP, and my problem is: with Xilinx the ISE tool is too slow! Both side, Windows and Linux are taking 15 minutes at least to synthesize for a Spartan S3e500, so … i am using S3e100 tiny boards in order to toy with fpga.

I am using ISE v10.1 and my biggest project is a 6809 minimal SoC (CPU 8bit, ram, rom, uart) targeted on S3e500, while on S3e100 i am toying with signals generator, pwm, ppm, arbitrary wave … and such a stuff.

How big is your project and which is your development machine, and how long does it take to synthesize / logic gate level simulate ?

I love the Papilo Pro, but it's Spartan 6, much more bigger than my tiny fpga, so i wandering how long it will take my i2 machine to synthesize or to logic-cate-level simulate a project.

[legacy]

A good book to start with is "Digital Design and Architecture" by David Harris and Sara Harris which will take you from digital logic basics to developing a MIPS CPU. Besides the schematics it also develops in Verilog and VHDL side by side.

thank you! I have bought if from an USA old book reseller for $40 shipped ($18 of shipping), it is a second hand book but it looks in a very good conditions (no signs on papers, the only thing i hate on second-hands books).

[legacy]

A good starter board is the Xilinx kit based on one of the Spartan 3A or 3AN devices. The parts are big enough to learn with but not so huge that the board is cost-prohibitive.

about "automotive", there are still a few boards on ebay, "XC3S100E" in "TQ144" package, soldered on tiny board with flash and jtag connector (and a few leds around): It is labelled "Digilent" (probably made around 2005). They are sold as very very un-expensive boards, i bought 3 of them at $10 each, qty=3 $40 shipped, unfortunately they are poor about Logic Elements, only 100K gates, but it's a kit from Xilinx and it comes with a CD full of examples and documentation.

[miguelvp]

If you have Altera based FPGA dev kits using Quartus II

Altera has a lot of tutorials, some of them are misplaced as in their requirements courses come after the course but it's a good road map and not terribly long. Although I recommend you doing it QuartusII as well of just watching how it's done.

http://www.altera.com/education/training/curriculum/fpga/trn-fpga.html

They do offer other courses for free as well under that training part. like CPLD (mostly the same courses) SoC, DSP, etc lots of resources.

[scientist]

The Mojo v3 is nice, and it has an onboard ATMega chip that can be programmed with Arduino. The Spartan 6 on it is sufficient.

[Chipguy]

The Mojo v3 is nice, and it has an onboard ATMega chip that can be programmed with Arduino. The Spartan 6 on it is sufficient.

Agreed, I have watched the Mojo on Kickstarter and followed the link to the manufacturer site.
They have a distributor for Germany / Europe and it can be ordered from stock at 79 EUR IIRC.
It's one of the boards I would consider for a bigger project.

[legacy]

i need something to be get-started about external asynchronous ram, static ram parallel bus.
any good doc, tutorial around ?

i am putting a 6809 SoC on Spartan3e wiring a NvRAM @ 3.3V (to be used to store data)

[expertmax]

I'd definitely start with a Altera starter kit. Comes with all the tools, documentation and software.

http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-terasic-cyclone-v-gx-starter.html

My questions is : if you write a code for a specific FPGA, is it compatible for use in another FPGA, let's say from a Cyclone III to a Cyclone V ?

[mrflibble]

My questions is : if you write a code for a specific FPGA, is it compatible for use in another FPGA, let's say from a Cyclone III to a Cyclone V ?

Generally yes. And if you stay with the same vendor things are usually even easier. As in if you happen to use some vendor provided cores for your clock resources and whatnot.

[miguelvp]

I'd definitely start with a Altera starter kit. Comes with all the tools, documentation and software.

http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-terasic-cyclone-v-gx-starter.html

My questions is : if you write a code for a specific FPGA, is it compatible for use in another FPGA, let's say from a Cyclone III to a Cyclone V ?

Just as a note, that kit (I got it too) doesn't come with the CD that includes the documentation and software, but you can download that from Terasic after registration (no need to buy the kit to register). Also you have to install QuartusII from Altera.

As for porting to other FPGAs, if you stick with Altera they have a device migration built in in QuartusII. Also the Terasic boards come with a configuration utility that creates (only Verilog) templates and sets the pins that you are planning to use via a nice GUI.

A lot of their examples use the Qsys system integration, it sure makes life easier, although I kind of missed the simplicity of SOPC Builder that they used before, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to port to say Xilinx once you use those tools.

I did write a review here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/terasic-cyclone-v-gx-starter-kit-(c5g)-review/

Another caveat is that Terasic does favor Verilog on their examples. But converting the generated templates to VHDL is easy, also you can import Verilog modules into VHDL code, a bit tricky but not hard at all, or just stick with Verilog.

All the datasheets for everything is included and you can even get more (specially for the HDMI TX chip) from the Analog Devices website.

I did look at the Mojo when I was looking for an FPGA dev board, only reason I didn't is that they didn't have a lot of source, examples etc compared to what Altera/Terasic offers.

Papilio, that is a different thing, it has a lot of community support and pretty cool projects and it's pretty affordable. No HDMI however.
I believe the Composite Video is a 7 bits R2R implemented DAC someone made that gives you 64 colors (good for 8bit graphics). Their mega wing supports VGA output with 4 bits R2R DACs per color for a 12 bit total, or 4096 different colors.

But the cool thing about FPGAs is that anyone could implement an "HDMI" wing like this guy did (I quoted HDMI because it's not really HDMI, just LVDS driving the LCD directly, but digital nevertheless):
http://forum.gadgetfactory.net/index.php?/page/articles.html/_/papilio/papilio-wings/alex-makes-hdmi-wings-for-the-papilio-plus-r61

But nothing stops anyone for using the ADV7513 HDMI-TX chip that is in the Cyclone V GX starter kit for real HDMI, and maybe do a better implementation since the starter kit didn't hook the HDMI audio part to the FPGA since it has an audio DAC already, but the pins for HDMI audio are there but unpopulated so you could add a header and use that instead.