Learning HW design with FPGA

Hi Friends,

Is there any tutorial to learn about the hardware design with FPGA? not in the software perspective...

Hi,

Did yo look for tutorials at the FPGA manufacturers?
Did you look for books?
Did you look for video tutorials?

All exist.
Please do the search. Then - in case you don't find what you are looking for - please refer to some search results.
Say why the tutorials of manufacturer xxx don't meet your expectations.

Usually there are a lot of FPGA starter kits, boards with interfaces and software. They usually come with simple examples, descriptions...easy to start

Klaus

Hi

Let me check on FPGA manufacturers..

I did some basic search in google i didn't find any one. all documents talking about software RTL codes etc. but i need configuration, interfacing like these

Hi,

I did some basic search in google i didn't find any one

Click to expand...

My internet search on ""FPGA starting tutorial" gives about 250 thousand results. This is far away from "not any one".

but i need configuration, interfacing like these

Click to expand...

Maybe this is the key problem.
What exactly do you mean with "configuration" and "interface". Both are wide areas. It can be internal it can be external it can be the programming interface aor many other things.
If I don´t know .. there is a good chance that the search engine doesn´t know either.

Thus you should give more informations.

****
If you just want to know what HW is essential for the FPGA to operate, then every manufacturer shoud have "hardware design guides".
Starter kits usually come with a schematic. There you can see how they designed the hardware.

Klaus

In terms of good general purpose tutorials...I agree I haven't seen many. I've also never come across an HDL book I particularly liked.

First understand that FPGA design is hardware design. If you can't draw what you want to do with flip-flops and logic gates you're not in a good position to learn HDL. Second when you do write HDL code you should know what it's doing in terms of flip flops and logic gates.

Here is a table of code and the flip flop type it represents.
https://www.fpga4student.com/2017/02/verilog-code-for-d-flip-flop.html

A final tip for HDL: Don't over-think the language - there are many things you can write that are syntactically correct that can't be 'synthesized' because they can't be translated into flip-flops and logic gates. Before I grasped all this I remember trying to make two clock flip flops and trying for hours to trick the synthesizer into accepting it...not happening.


So finally download a development tool (Xilinx and Altera provide them for free among others) and start writing for a simulator starting with basic building blocks like flip flops, then counters, adders etc. That's the way to learn this.

Hi,

It depends on the amount of time yout have.

Structural implementation is a bit tasking as it demands in depth knowledge of gate level operation of the system you want to implement.

Behavioral is a bit loose as the simulation tools can aid in comparing the outcome of the code to expected result. Knowledge of blackbox FSM (and generally, sequential logic) and blackbox combinational logic may suffice. However, a good testbench code and simulation skills is required. You also should be able to analyze the subcircuits of a system at the register transfer level.

You may have to choose between VHDL and verilog. Books like "Digital Systems" by Tocci and others is very good for beginners. "Designer's Guide to VHDL" can improve your skills afterwards and serves as a good reference too. That is if you choose VHDL anyways.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for replying.. Im not trying to learn the HDL language. In software perspective, I just only want to know whats happening there. All I want to know the hardware perspective. Im able to learn the configuration thing of FPGA. since the datasheet is very huge, as beginner I cant able to follow.. is there any video tutorials...?

Hi,

I´m confused.

Sadly you seem to ignore most of our posts.

I really don´t know what exactly you want to do:

* FPGA design is hardware design.
* Usually you write HDL
* The compiler generates the config files

Difficult to help.

Klaus

This is what you said in #1 -

Is there any tutorial to learn about the hardware design with FPGA? not in the software perspective...

Click to expand...

Then in #7 you say -

In software perspective, I just only want to know whats happening there.

Click to expand...

You are making contradictory statements. It seems like you don't know what you are looking for!

It is very difficult to understand the FPGA if you don't have any experience with at least one HDLC language.

If you want to understand the basics of FPGA, I would recommend you the following:

- Define one FPGA Family as target - do not choose a high end FPGA, becauste they are very expensive. Chose a cheaper one, but try to go to a new technology. For example, Spartan 7 from Xilinx is a start.
- Based on your chosen FPGA family, download and install one FPGA environment, for example (ISE for olds Xilinx FPGAs, Vivado for newer Xilinx FPGAs, Quartus for Altera FPGAs).
- Learn at least the basics of one HDL language. For example, there is the Verilog in one day
- From the basics examples, you can synthesize your code and check what is the synthesized hardware inside your FPGA tool.
- Once you get the basics, you can go deeply into FPGA datasheets and user guides.

Unfortunately there is no other way to learn how to FPGA works, except learning how FPGA works. You have to pass trough the coding phase because it is the only good way to generate a FPGA HW (some would say schematics, but really, it is not an option normally and certainly it is not an option from a SW guy entering into FPGA world).

If you want to see some relationship between generated codes and HW, I would indicate this document with some examples of code and generated HW, it is a good start to understand some concepts: https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/white_papers/wp231.pdf

Also, a series overview might be interesting: https://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/data_sheets/ds180_7Series_Overview.pdf (from Spartan-7, if you chose other family then look for series overview from other FPGA family).