FPGA book for absolute beginners

3/6/2008 8:23 AM EST

Interesting - I am curious what hardware this is written around. One thing that has kept the casual learner away is the lack of low-end starter kits. You can learn a uP/uC with a $49 demo board (or free if you attend a seminar) from many mfrs - where are the $49 demos from FPGA companies?

3/6/2008 10:48 AM EST

FPGAs and CPLDs themselves are quickly becoming commodities - as long as they have the features you need (sometimes a very difficult thing to determine, particularly with PLLs and high speed memory & serial interfaces, and block ram caveats) and the price is right and the vendor tools aren't half-baked you can stop looking. Only the FAEs care about how the LUTs are designed; as long as the synthesis tool can deal with them I don't really think about it too much. But you won't find the advanced stuff that can (and will) bite you in the rear end in a dummies book. People that need an intro to this field would do best going to the vendor sites and reading some datasheets, white papers, and application notes. True EEPROM cell based CPLDs are almost dead, and the CPLD-like things that are taking their place are really just small FPGAs with built-in configuration memory, so the hardware is actually unifying to a large degree.

I don't think we need an intro to FPGAs book as much as we need a really practical intro to digital design. And I don't mean 10 chapters on Karnaugh maps and the like, but real digital architecture: how to deal with asynchronous hazards, vectors crossing clock domains, FIFOs, register sets, etc. with examples in VHDL and verilog. Every HDL book I've seen has impractical examples, and goes on and on about features of the HDL that should never be used in RTL descriptions. 99% of PLD designs have a register set, why not devote one chapter to a small version like you might find in a CPLD and a really big version like you would find in an FPGA? How about some real dirt on state machines? And I don't mean state reduction and encoding as that is usually handled by synthesis, I mean proper style, when and how to use the various forms, delay through them, etc. These are the things I had to really fight with in my 10+ years of digital design, and I'm still learning something really fundamental every now and then.

I think the biggest barrier to learning HDL (and so FPGAs) is the high cost of simulation. Unless you or your company have a wad of cash laying around for MTI you'll probably be using the simulator in the vendor tool (if it has one). The gold standard for simulators really needs to be free (or nearly so). The state of simulation in this field is amazingly expensive and proprietary (I really hate MTI, btw).

3/6/2008 10:49 AM EST

There are $49 FPGA demos, but the main problem I see are the simulation, synthesis, and PAR tools. They are cost prohibitive. I would be interested in this new book initiative.

3/6/2008 12:10 PM EST

I have bought $49 prototype boards from Xilinx over the years for their CPLDs and FPGAs.

Now they are $99 and $149, see http://www.xilinx.com/publications/solguides/be_01/xc_pdf/p48_be1-FPGAstarter.pdf,
as the technology has gotten more complex. The EDA software has been free, and still is as far as I know.

You can simulate real-time operations for your design by putting up a file describing the input signals on a relative time base.
(It has been a while since I've done that.) When you run the simulation, the resultants come as they are produced and you can check the diagram for design compliance.

3/7/2008 8:38 AM EST

About a year ago, Xilinx was giving away a credit-card sized Spartan 3 board. Not a lot of bells-and-whistles, but great for programming an FPGA and making LEDs flash!

The WebPack from Xilinx is the full set of development tools. The primary difference is that the large, high-end FPGAs aren't supported, but if you're using a small to mid sized Spartan 3/3E/3A/3AN part, who cares?

I don't think that you'll find anyone who will argue that the built-in simulator that Xilinx offers rivals MTI; however, it is improving in stability, performance, and ease-of-use. Did I mention that it comes with the development tools?

EDW mentioned that FPGAs are becoming commodity items - I'll partially agree. While it is certainly true that small and sometimes mid sized designs that don't use any specialized resources (such as built-in math functions, PCIe hard cores, etc.) can be bounced from one vendor to another, any time that a "corner" case is reached - a design that pushes density, size, performance, features, etc, most of the time it comes out in favor of Xilinx.

Bouncing back and forth between the vendors is costly - not just in dollars, but in learning curve which translates to performance. Some vendors offer capabilities in the tools that are absent in others, but this usually shows up only at the intermediate/expert user level.

Proper education and training from initial contact with programmable logic is highly advantageous! The student is guided through the critical (and sometimes very confusing) aspects of language, design style, constraint writing thus ensuring that there are no major "gaps" in the student's knowledge, and, as a bonus, the student learns the material faster, encounters less frustration, and becomes productive sooner.

I'm all for this book!

3/8/2008 5:23 AM EST

i want to download the FPGA book for absolute beginners where is the download link for this book

3/11/2008 9:48 AM EDT

Hi there -- Max here -- it sounds like you are exactly the right person to write such a book . . . so when can we expect to see it (grin)

3/11/2008 9:49 AM EDT

Hi there -- the original article wasn't about reviewing the actual book -- it was about reviewing the proposal for the book (the book itself hasn't been written yet) -- Cheers --Max

3/14/2008 11:16 AM EDT

Two beginner's books already exist that I would suggest...

Circuit Design with VHDL, by Volnei Pedroni, MIT Press, 2004. I own this book and have used it. This textbook is just what it says, a book about digital circuit design using VHDL. It starts at the beginning and is almost completely synthesis oriented. It's kind of like a cookbook for VHDL, it assumes you know digital circuit elements, gates, muxes, counters, state machines, etc. There is none of the non-synthesizable stuff that many books spend lots space on. The illustrations use Altera's software. This book in conjunction with a starter kit (and the free software) from Altera or Xilinx would be a great way to learn about FPGA's. Two other great things about this book are that there are virtually no typos or mistakes in the examples, and the examples are complete i.e. the full entity and architecture is shown for each example. Simulator waveforms for the designs are shown but writing test benches is not covered.

Another book I have thumbed through at the local Barnes and Noble is Design Recipes for FPGAs, by Peter Wilson, Newnes, 2007. This book is also very cookbook oriented with practical, usable examples of typical digital circuits in VHDL. So it would also be good as a starter book in conjunction with a manufacturer's starter kit and software. I think the examples here are ModelSim based. Caveat, since I haven't read it fully, I don't know if this book has the usual collection of typos that seem to plague most HDL/FPGA books.

6/28/2011 1:29 AM EDT

I've just published a book on FPGA design, although it's not for absolute beginners. The book site is here: http://outputlogic.com/100_fpga_power_tips

Thanks,
Evgeni

6/30/2011 2:57 PM EDT

plz refer me any fpga book.....