Electronics > FPGA

Bought an Altera CPLD dev board, where to start?

(1/6) > >>

vortexnl:
I've always liked playing with digital logic, it kinda started in minecraft using redstone circuits, but since I'm an electrical engineer, I wanted to get familiar with FPGA's and CPLD's. So I recently bought an Altera CPLD dev board together with a programmer, and I want to start playing around with it. But since CPLD's aren't as powerful as FPGA's, what are some fun projects to get started with? I've looked on the internet, but couldn't find much. So I thought I'd ask the EEVBlog community!

Thanks in advance,

Nick

jamesglanville:
You could make a bus readout for 7 segment displays, reading 8 or 16 pins and outputting the data as hex on the 7 segment leds. That's some fairly simple logic, plus a handy tool (useful for when I was debugging my z80, although I used an MCU instead)

bwat:
Why CPLD? This is a serious question from someone who has never used one and doesn't understand the pros/cons of them.

I'm working my way through a digital design book with FPGAs as my target - described here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/papilio-duo-fpgaardunio/msg469049/#msg469049.

FrankBuss:
One CPLD alone can't do much, they don't have many logic elements. It is easier to learn hardware design with FPGAs.

But I could imagine some fun projects in combination with a microcontroller or some SRAM. For starting, maybe implement something simple, like a frequency counter or a PWM output, after the obligatory blinking LED :)


--- Quote from: bwat on July 01, 2014, 11:19:02 am ---Why CPLD? This is a serious question from someone who has never used one and doesn't understand the pros/cons of them.

--- End quote ---
Usually FPGAs have more logic elements, but they need an external configuration memory and multiple supply voltages. A CPLD has internal configuration memory and there are types which needs only one supply voltage. But some Lattice FPGAs have internal configuration memory, too, and one supply voltage, and some CPLDs need more than one supply voltage. So the main difference is the number of logic elements, FPGAs have more, and more interesting things like integrated PLLs, RAM and hardware multipliers. Typically CPLDs are used for simple logic, like glue logic for chip enable address decoders, latches etc.

I think there are technical differences how the internal logic elements work as well, but modern synthesis tools hide this complexity and simple VHDL or Verilog programs can be synthesized without changes for both types.

diyaudio:

--- Quote from: vortexnl on July 01, 2014, 10:11:06 am ---I've always liked playing with digital logic, it kinda started in minecraft using redstone circuits, but since I'm an electrical engineer, I wanted to get familiar with FPGA's and CPLD's. So I recently bought an Altera CPLD dev board together with a programmer, and I want to start playing around with it. But since CPLD's aren't as powerful as FPGA's, what are some fun projects to get started with? I've looked on the internet, but couldn't find much. So I thought I'd ask the EEVBlog community!

Thanks in advance,

Nick

--- End quote ---

Although I have no experience in this area, I was thinking of a cool application for a CPLD to drive  any LCD of my choice to free I/O and  processor resources dealing with LCD display rendering... Many say CPLD is the entry point for journey into FPGA`s...

   

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page