Music Player Implemented using FPGA (Xilinx Spartan 3)

[bd3lk]

Hi guys,

Our final project in the Digital Systems Engineering course is to implement a music player (wav/mp3/other), using a FPGA (language: VHDL).

What are the best books that one (a beginner), can read to get an understanding on how to design systems on an FPGA, specifically Xilinx (Spartan 3 or Virtex 5 - these are the two available to us) ?

Assume my knowledge of FPGAs and any design Tools is at a very basic level (or none at all), but knowledge of VHDL is somewhat intermediate - I have done some behavioural simulation using Modelsim.

What books or documentation have you gone through to learn about FPGAs ?

Many Thanks and Best regards,
Rosh

 

[TrickyDicky]

If you can write VHDL then there isnt too much you need to learn about FPGAs. They are full of registers and LUTs (for the boolean logic), and more expensive devices have extensive RAM and dedicated multipliers. Using these elements isnt much harder than writing behavioural VHDL - arrays for memories and c <= a * b; for multipliers. Just make sure you follow the coding templates for specific things.

To get firmware onto FPGAs, you will need ISE for xilinx. Just create a project, add your source code, assign your pinout and press compile. The ISE manual should contain coding templates for various bits.

 

[bd3lk]

Hi TrickyDicky,
Thanks for your reply. But specifically, are there any books or material which shows how to implement some kind of DSP algorithm on a FPGA ?

One book which i've found was :
FPGA prototyping by VHDL examples: Xilinx Spartan-3 version By Pong P. Chu

but are there any other books targeted at Xilinx FPGAs ?

Thanks,
Rosh