Looking for Advice on getting started with FPGAs
2-Zons wrote 10/24/2020 at 23:00 • 0 pointsI'm interested in learning FPGA design. I would like to be able to design something on the scale of a 16 bit microcontroller minus RAM/ROM, or an HDMI video chip with a simple frame buffer. I've been doing some googling, and the information I can find is a bit overwhelming. I'm basically looking for advice from a knowledgeable person to point me in the right direction and get me started in a cost effective way. I'm looking at this as a hobby not as a career.
Anything anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated.
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I'm in a similar situation, except costs are my #1 concern. I'm interested in the IceBreaker from CrowdSupply https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker-fpga which has a complete open source toolchain. But... Sparkfun now sells "Alchitry Au FPGA" with Xilinx Artix 7 and you start by downloading Vivando by Xilinx. The tutorial writer for Alchitry literally wrote the O'Reilly book "Learning FPGAs", but that book used the Xilinx ISE and the Mojo IDE. Now he insists on the superiority of Vivando and the Lucid IDE. Understandable, but it gives me pause. Am I going to be stuck with Xilinx thereafter, need hundred$ to upgrade or be totally lost if they bankrupt? Maybe using Open Source Yosys and Icestorm will make me want to scrape out my eyeballs with a rusty spoon, but five years from now? Ten? It reminds me in the 90s, being tempted by Amiga and BeOS, but sticking with Linux instead, mainly for frugality. I may not have the fun nostalgia of Amiga fans' retrocomputing, but I can put my favorite OS on anything with a 386 chip up to the newest computers. FOSS wins in the long run. PS Europeans are spending fortunes upgrading and re-creating Amigas with Vampire FPGAs. I'm partly debating whether to just get a Mister FPGA set-up; a Terasic DE10-nano, and know I can retrogame right away, Maybe slowly absorbing bits of FPGA hacking by playing around with that. After all, maybe I'll hate programming FPGAs, and the boards get thrown away, without even a decent Space Invaders game to show for it!
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It can be overwhelming but the information is out there. Just take your time. Bruce Land does a good job explaining things:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2BA78454E71FF0E5
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These are great vids, thanks.
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Here is my introduction to FPGAs, hope it helps...
https://hackaday.io/project/175677-super-custom-pwm-fpga
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If you fancy an open-source toolchain take a look at Lattice FPGA's and the toolchain https://symbiflow.github.io/. You can get a rather powerful FPGA (ECP5) for cheap here http://www.fabienm.eu/flf/15-ecp5-board-kit/.
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Check out https://8bitworkshop.com and the examples in their WebIDE. They have examples up to a 16bit system: https://8bitworkshop.com/v3.6.0/?file=test2.asm&platform=verilog
GUIy FPGAing?
https://github.com/FPGAwars/icestudio is a more graphical way to design FPGA contents and https://github.com/hneemann/Digital is a LogiSim-alike which can output to verilog.
And I bet, others have many more interesting links to your question... I'm curious too!
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I'm also wondering if there is FPGA development software that works similar to Logisim?
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There are indeed visual/graphical FPGA development tools out there... but their accessibility is limited by a user's understanding of some of the fundamental concepts (when I played with these tools I resorted to coding for simplicity's sake).
This includes traditional vendors such as Intel (having acquired Altera) as well as some experimental open source toolchains (designed to work with the previously referenced Lattice FPGAs).
Good luck!
https://hackaday.com/2016/02/23/icestudio-an-open-source-graphical-fgpa-tool/
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