Advice on fpga, cpld or psoc. The next step

[Corporate666]

A lot of talk about FPGA and CPLD which is great, but doesn't necessarily address the original question of what to use.

I would say that if you are starting with MCU experience, then PSoC is going to be the easiest and most productive for you.  I think the Cypress PSoC chips are phenomenal, and the dev kit that miguelvp posted, this one:

http://www.cypress.com/?rid=108038

has to be one of the most screaming deals in dev kit history.  It's a top-of-the-line 80Mhz ARM Cortex M3 processor with lots of programmable digital and analog logic.

Whereas a standard MCU will have 3 times, 2 PWM's, 5 interrupts, an ADC or whatever, the PSoC chip instead has a given number of 'blank pages' (programmable blocks).  You can put whatever you want on those pages... if you need 20 PWM's, you just keep adding PWM blocks - you can add as many as the chip has free blocks.  You could add 10 SPI channels, 8 timers, 20 interrupts, an LCD controller or whatever else you want.  There are also pre-built functions that you drag-and-drop into your project that do things most other chips can't do in hardware.  Things like quadrature decoding, fan speed control, LINbus, shift registers, switch debouncers, SDM modulators, or whatever.  There are also 3rd party components like those to drive WS2812 LED's or interface with unique LCD's.   You can also write your own stuff in Verilog/VHDL although it's not made to be easy as it would be with a dedicated FPGA tool.

Anyway, that board posted above is $10 and includes a programmer, just plug it in your USB port and that's all you need.

[miguelvp]

Agreed, but one thing to take into account is sample code, so even if the 5LP prototyping boards is a screaming deal I would start with the PSoC 4 Pioneer kit for $25 and check out the 100 projects in 100 days at element 14 on the link I posted before.

At least so you can get confident enough to move to the 5LP ($10 one) more powerful board, because starting with that one might be too frustrating to start with, without as many samples.

On top of nice examples (even via the IDE) you can watch some videos from their youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOPwgpx4mNwPULlfdCn1xiQ

I would not watch them until you get some projects running because the videos might not make a lot of sense or they'll be too fast paced if you haven't get your feet wet.

Edit: and again, if you need something that has to output over 40MHz (and that is stretching the timings a lot) even the 5LP might not cut it. So it would help to know what projects you have in mind.

[hneve]

Ok a lot of good information here now,  as I understand a psoc can contain both a uC and some logic blocks making it a mix of both, while also having some analog possibilities.

As a hobbyist I then recon the most versatile must be a psoc. I might get both the 5lp and maybe also the pioneer kit,  I like a lot of examples and a bag of projects to try out.

[neslekkim]

Ok a lot of good information here now,  as I understand a psoc can contain both a uC and some logic blocks making it a mix of both, while also having some analog possibilities.

As a hobbyist I then recon the most versatile must be a psoc. I might get both the 5lp and maybe also the pioneer kit,  I like a lot of examples and a bag of projects to try out.

If you order from cypress, make sure you get them to understand that shippingcosts need to be stated on the shippingpapers, otherwise you get a hell with FedEx.. (Unless you mange to get all the trackinnumbers early from cypress, and submitt the invoices to FedEx before you receive the stuff.. Cypress almost always divides the stuff into many packages, and FedEx calculates skyhigh shippingcosts to drive tax.. I'm still in this mess: http://www.dinside.no/933958/tollvesenet-vi-belastes-av-klager-paa-350-kronersgrensa )

[hneve]

No worries, I use no.farnell.com or eBay mostly.
Just got to get them to get it for me.

350kr grensa suger fætt ja.....

[bingo600]

No worries, I use no.farnell.com or eBay mostly.
Just got to get them to get it for me.

350kr grensa suger fætt ja.....

350 ville være fint 
Det er 80dkk i Danmark 

/Bingo

[Muxr]

Pretty much the only reason to use a CPLD is to save cost in production where the functionality is simple. It is extremely easy to burst the capacity of a CPLD, and you sometimes need to get quite creative to fit things into the smaller devices.
For learning, use an FPGA (on a devboard) . You can ignore all the fancy stuff in FPGAs & start simple.

If you're doing something with a view to putting it on your own board, I'd reccommend looking at Lattice XO2, s it has a lot of the fiddly oddments built in - flash, voltage regs, and even a (not super accurate) oscillator. Lattice also do very cheap bare-bones breakout boards.
The range covers low-end simple devices up to bigger devices with block RAM and PLLs etc.

I second this advice. As someone who was in a similar boat as the original poster few months back, I went with the Lattice MachXO2. They are cheap and easy to use. Also they can take lots of flash writes (more than competing products), so you can reprogram them continuously as you're learning.

I should probably leverage simulation more, but I just find it easier to program and actually measure the signals I am working with in real life. FPGA/CPLD programming is something I am doing as aside, so for low commitment just another tool in the toolbox type of thing XO2 is perfect.

Diamond software is free, and while maybe not as powerful as competing products I found it pretty intuitive, once I went through all the options. The development board is about the cheapest dev. board you can get. At $26 a piece you can get a few of them, and experiment at will, without worrying about frying an expensive board.

Should you decide to use one in your design, the chips are easily obtainable and are pretty cheap. Mouser has them at less than $4 a piece for the smallest unit for low quantities.

And if you decide you're outgrown the CPLDs, you will have learned the fundamentals of FPGA programming that switching to a different vendor and chip should be pretty easy.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I second this advice. As someone who was in a similar boat as the original poster few months back, I went with the Lattice MachXO2. They are cheap and easy to use. Also they can take lots of flash writes (more than competing products), so you can reprogram them continuously as you're learning.

While learning you should mostly be using RAM download rather than programming the flash as it's a lot quicker

[Muxr]

I second this advice. As someone who was in a similar boat as the original poster few months back, I went with the Lattice MachXO2. They are cheap and easy to use. Also they can take lots of flash writes (more than competing products), so you can reprogram them continuously as you're learning.

While learning you should mostly be using RAM download rather than programming the flash as it's a lot quicker

That's a good idea, will give that a try next time. Thanks!

[Corporate666]

Ok a lot of good information here now,  as I understand a psoc can contain both a uC and some logic blocks making it a mix of both, while also having some analog possibilities.

As a hobbyist I then recon the most versatile must be a psoc. I might get both the 5lp and maybe also the pioneer kit,  I like a lot of examples and a bag of projects to try out.

What miguelvp said is probably correct... I've been working with PSoC for several years now, and while many aspects of the chips seems second nature to me, it's been so long since I started with them that perhaps they have a steeper learning curve then I remember.  But something else to keep in mind is that Cypress has training classes all around the world quite regularly.  They are free to attend and you usually get a free dev kit for showing up - and they have Cypress engineers running the classes and walking you through building projects, so any questions you have or anything that's unclear, they are there to help.

And if you are doing it for your work, you probably get a free day off work to attend, as well as free lunch and get to hang out with other electronics folks for a few hours.

[hneve]

@Corporate666:

And if you are doing it for your work, you probably get a free day off work to attend

A day off as a taxi driver, my boss is already pissed i gotta be home by 16:30 at least a few days a week.

free lunch

Interresting ... hmmmm

and get to hang out with other electronics folks for a few hours.

I'd love that, there are not many other nerds around where I live (or maybe theyre just hiding) so I would really love to meet up with people and talk shop.
As a taxi driver starting aroung 6-7 in the morning I'm mostly fed up with talking about the weather around 9. lol

[hneve]

Just a thought i want to mention here, as earlier stated I'm stretched for time, therefore as I started with the arduino some time ago I later got used to Atmels documentation, I mean how the documents are built and the structure and examples. I have looked at other uC aswell but when looking at the doc's, they feel unusual and strange.
I know this is maybe just me but is it so that you also prefer a producer just because you are familiar around their documentation ?

[neslekkim]

I know this is maybe just me but is it so that you also prefer a producer just because you are familiar around their documentation ?

I would guess this is normal, some writes very good documentations, and some don't, or write so much differently that it takes time to wrap your head around it.
Should have been classes/courses to learn to read them

[firehopper]

and actually that board you mention has 2 psoc 5lp chips on it. both are programmable, one is the kitprog, (It will also program psoc4 chips) and the other is the target.

A lot of talk about FPGA and CPLD which is great, but doesn't necessarily address the original question of what to use.

I would say that if you are starting with MCU experience, then PSoC is going to be the easiest and most productive for you.  I think the Cypress PSoC chips are phenomenal, and the dev kit that miguelvp posted, this one:

http://www.cypress.com/?rid=108038

has to be one of the most screaming deals in dev kit history.  It's a top-of-the-line 80Mhz ARM Cortex M3 processor with lots of programmable digital and analog logic.

Whereas a standard MCU will have 3 times, 2 PWM's, 5 interrupts, an ADC or whatever, the PSoC chip instead has a given number of 'blank pages' (programmable blocks).  You can put whatever you want on those pages... if you need 20 PWM's, you just keep adding PWM blocks - you can add as many as the chip has free blocks.  You could add 10 SPI channels, 8 timers, 20 interrupts, an LCD controller or whatever else you want.  There are also pre-built functions that you drag-and-drop into your project that do things most other chips can't do in hardware.  Things like quadrature decoding, fan speed control, LINbus, shift registers, switch debouncers, SDM modulators, or whatever.  There are also 3rd party components like those to drive WS2812 LED's or interface with unique LCD's.   You can also write your own stuff in Verilog/VHDL although it's not made to be easy as it would be with a dedicated FPGA tool.

Anyway, that board posted above is $10 and includes a programmer, just plug it in your USB port and that's all you need.

[hneve]

I know this is maybe just me but is it so that you also prefer a producer just because you are familiar around their documentation ?

I would guess this is normal, some writes very good documentations, and some don't, or write so much differently that it takes time to wrap your head around it.
Should have been classes/courses to learn to read them

I actually remember from my school days we did learn how to read the documentation of discreet chips, and what some of those technical stuff really means.  But that is 20 years ago....

[neslekkim]

I would guess this is normal, some writes very good documentations, and some don't, or write so much differently that it takes time to wrap your head around it.
Should have been classes/courses to learn to read them

I actually remember from my school days we did learn how to read the documentation of discreet chips, and what some of those technical stuff really means.  But that is 20 years ago....

Same here, learned to read documentation for the 74 series and so on, but that is almost 30 years ago, and those datasheets was very easy. What I struggles most with is understanding of all the clock-diagrams for microchip series.

[hneve]

Anyways, I'll get a pioneer kit and that 5lp kit also and see where I go from there.  Probably 100 experiments in 100+ days

Thank you all for good information (no negative feedback here!)

[ale500]

Schematic capture for CPLD/FPGA is rather clumsy, like the interface is against you for some reason. Maybe I am too custom to 'normal' schematic capture as in schematic->pcb workflows. I really like Lattice Diamond but I rather type y couple of Verilog lines instead.

[hneve]

Just a little update.

I've downloaded the PSoC Creator and have looked through a few of the examples and how things work, I must say i'm impressed by this software, the ease of accessing documentation in here is beyond anything i have encountered before, all modules are really well documented and is only a button away. the language and ease of understanding are very good.

I have entered this with a mind set to that this is NOT a microcontroller, and i think I'm getting the logic of this.

It really IS a microcontroller, BUT it's tucked inside of complex logic that need to be in place before thinking of it as a microcontroller.
I'm almost ashamed I haven't looked this way before. 

Still waiting for delivery on the hardware