Complete newbie

[Spark-Doctor]

Hi All

I am a complete newbie to FPGA's and was wondering which development board you would recommend backed up by books for instructions and videos.

Many thanks in advance.

Ian

[RoGeorge]

I started from this website, and found very clean explanations in their "FPGA Introduction" section, projects, etc.
https://www.fpga4fun.com/

They have some boards for sale, I think, but I don't know about those, since I already had an FPGA recovered from the display of a big HP office printer, so I am not answering your question here, just pointing to a nice FPGA generic info website.
 

[rstofer]

Your question is far too broad to expect any reasonable reply or series of replies.

The Internet is loaded with tutorials, try Google.  If you want to learn a lot about VHDL (one of the two popular HDLs) then VHDLwhiz.com is quite good.  I just finished the 'for pay' tutorial and it is based on the Lattice ICE 40 board.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/842-ICE40HX1KSTICKEV

I would probably never use this board for anything I developed because it simply doesn't have enough 'gadgets' or pins.  I would likely use the Digilent Nexys A7

https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-a7-fpga-trainer-board-recommended-for-ece-curriculum/

There's a heck of a difference between the Lattice stick at $25 and the Digilent board at $265 and there are a lot of boards in the middle.

I would also consider these boards
https://store.digilentinc.com/basys-3-artix-7-fpga-trainer-board-recommended-for-introductory-users/  Only available in 35-T variant, pretty small device
https://store.digilentinc.com/arty-a7-artix-7-fpga-development-board-for-makers-and-hobbyists/   100-T variant, of course.

Do you have any experience with hardware design?  University courses, etc?  If not, it's a steep climb.  Heck, it's steep even with courses.


I wanted to learn about test benches when I subscribed to the VHDL Whiz Dot Matrix course.  This course is worth every dime!  But it's not free and most will object to paying for anything on the Internet.  OTOH, I have found that education is NEVER free!

https://vhdlwhiz.teachable.com/p/dot-matrix

[rstofer]

There is a free book on VHDL "Free Range VHDL"

http://freerangefactory.org/pdf/df344hdh4h8kjfh3500ft2/free_range_vhdl.pdf
https://freerangefactory.org/

[Dmeads]

nandland go-board https://www.nandland.com/goboard/introduction.html

is a good one, Russel (the guy who runs nandland) has some great tutorials and documentation for the board and projects. https://www.nandland.com/

also he has a youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/nandland

there are some videos on using the lattice programmer tools as well (lattice is the FPGA on the go board)

[james_s]

I like the EP2C5T144C8 mini boards because they're dirt cheap, compact and simple yet still spacious enough to implement an entire 8 bit computer. I have larger boards and find lots of built in accessories to generally be a nuisance, they rarely have what I actually want and I have to set lots of pins to disable all the stuff I'm not using. I do have one larger board that I really like though, a DE2 but even on that I mostly just use the switches, buttons, LEDs and 7 segment displays. As someone else said though, the question is too broad to really be helpful, ultimately it matters little what board you use, VHDL is VHDL and code written for one FPGA is often easily ported to another. In fact that is how I got started out, by porting other designs to hardware I had.

Download Quartus II, ISE, Vivado and whatever Lattice calls their development suite and have a play with them. You're stuck with the vendor supplied software supporting whatever chip you end up using so that has the biggest impact on your selection.

[blacksheeplogic]

I like the EP2C5T144C8 mini boards because they're dirt cheap, compact and simple yet still spacious enough to implement an entire 8 bit computer.

I just purchased a MAX 10 T-Core board from Terasic. The BSP provides a port of Freedom RISCV. The board can also be used as a programmer for other Altera boards, 50K elements, and I think from memory the MAX 10 also supports 'Instant ON'.

Offers only very basic features and very limited GPIO but a good starter Altera board if you don't want HPS.

[avogadro]

Depends on what you want to do with the board really. I recommend you get ARM/FPGA SoC because while you can do anything in logic some things are just easier to do in the processor.

I own Arty A7-35T, its a pretty good board for a beginner. It doesnt have much on it but you have a lot of extensions, only problem is that it doesnt have much BRAM on it but its got enough logic. Its not SoC though.

[mrflibble]

Joel's list of fpga dev boards is always a handy resource:

https://joelw.id.au/FPGA/CheapFPGADevelopmentBoards

[james_s]

The ARM/FPGA hybrids are useless to me. I'm not a software developer, I don't know how to make the ARM do anything worthwhile. I can design hardware though and I learned VHDL well enough to make things that work. I'm almost exclusively recreating vintage hardware though, there are certainly applications where I can see the ARM being useful but for a beginner trying to learn FPGA development it seems like a lot of additional complexity for possibly little or no gain.

[ralphrmartin]

Depends on what you want to do with the board really. I recommend you get ARM/FPGA SoC because while you can do anything in logic some things are just easier to do in the processor.

I'd agree. Something like a Pynq-Z2 is a good bet for this, as it you won't outgrow it in a hurry, and it is easy to prototype stuff on the ARM side in Python. It also has a various useful peripherals. As an example of why the ARM stuff is useful - you could develop some sort of audio processor / generator on the FPGA side, and then control it from the ARM side (play tunes, adjust the volume / filters, load new samples into it and so on).

[blacksheeplogic]

The ARM/FPGA hybrids are useless to me. I'm not a software developer, I don't know how to make the ARM do anything worthwhile. I can design hardware though and I learned VHDL well enough to make things that work. I'm almost exclusively recreating vintage hardware though, there are certainly applications where I can see the ARM being useful but for a beginner trying to learn FPGA development it seems like a lot of additional complexity for possibly little or no gain.

If your looking for a single development board, having the HPS is a good option. You don't have to make use of the HPS and the tools still allow programming the FPGA side without going near the HPS. But you have the flexibility if at some point you have a project and want to make use of it. You also have the option of using the HPS as a basic linux system which is independent of what ever the FPGA is used for.

Overall, I don't always use the HPS but I like having a single go-to development board when I start a project.