3 ms·

FPGAs are worth studying in case anyone doesn't really know them. I once had an interview question right out of uni, and it was about FPGAs and I didn't know wh

FPGAs are worth studying in case anyone doesn't really know them. I once had an interview question right out of uni, and it was about FPGAs and I didn't know what they were. The interviewer really looked down his nose at me after I told him that.

dsacco 9y ago
Unless you were interviewing for a position that required that sort of knowledge, your interviewer was just being an asshole. Understanding of FPGAs is what I'd consider specialized enough that most people shouldn't be required to demonstrate it in a technical interview.
- metaphor 9y ago
  For CS majors, you're probably spot on. For EE recent grads, no excuses. Heterogenous compute isn't the future: it's the now, ready or not.
- cosinetau 9y ago
  I knew who I was dealing with before he said anything. ;)
analog31 9y ago
Ask HN: What's an inexpensive set-up for learning? I've done a lot of work with microcontrollers, but never FPGAs. Is there a cheap development board with software, that I can try out at home?
- cosinetau 9y ago
  I'm not up on a lot of the hardware stuff. Raspberry Pi? Beagleboard?
  - analog31 9y ago
    Got 'em. Those are microcontrollers. So to elaborate a bit more, a microcontroller (MCU) is a single integrated circuit containing a microprocessor CPU plus a fair amount of input/output hardware. These range in sophistication from 8-bit controllers costing less than a dollar and consuming very little electrical current, all the way up to the processors capable of running a cellphone and its likes. There are dozens of MCU's in your house, your car, and the gadgets that you carry around. A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a bunch of logic gates on a chip, that can be "wired" together in almost arbitrary ways. So in a sense it's more primitive than a MCU. The "field programmable" part is that the wiring pattern is programmed on a desktop computer and fed into the IC. This allows creating combinatorial or sequential logic functions that execute extremely quickly and often in parallel. In addition to simple logic gates, modern FPGA's offer other kinds of "cells" such as memory registers. Ironically, people have created wiring patterns that implement a complete microprocessor on an FPGA. This is the extent of my own knowledge, based on product descriptions but no actual experience doing anything with an FPGA.
  - wott 9y ago
    So you would fail that interview again :-)
    - cosinetau 9y ago
      No. I would not take a second interview from them.
- alunaryak 9y ago
  Terasic makes good Altera boards such as the $100 DE0-Nano series, and Digilent makes a decent Xilinx Artix-based dev board for around the same price. They both have decent community support, but just be aware that setting up the dev environment and getting all of the USB cable permissions sorted out (especially on linux) can take time. It's worth sticking with, though, because FPGAs are a blast to mess around with. The sheer compute power available to you is fun. [1] http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=941 http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=E... [2] http://store.digilentinc.com/arty-artix-7-fpga-development-board-for-makers-and-hobbyists/ http://store.digilentinc.com/arty-artix-7-fpga-development-b...
- chx 9y ago
  I have an Embedded Micro Mojo v3 I do not use. It was $75 but if you pay shipping from Vancouver BC to wherever you are, it's yours for free. chx1975 gmail
- tikwidd 9y ago
  Check out http://www.fpga4fun.com/ http://www.fpga4fun.com/

dsacco 9y ago

Unless you were interviewing for a position that required that sort of knowledge, your interviewer was just being an asshole. Understanding of FPGAs is what I'd consider specialized enough that most people shouldn't be required to demonstrate it in a technical interview.

metaphor 9y ago
For CS majors, you're probably spot on. For EE recent grads, no excuses. Heterogenous compute isn't the future: it's the now, ready or not.
cosinetau 9y ago
I knew who I was dealing with before he said anything. ;)

analog31 9y ago

Ask HN: What's an inexpensive set-up for learning? I've done a lot of work with microcontrollers, but never FPGAs. Is there a cheap development board with software, that I can try out at home?

cosinetau 9y ago
I'm not up on a lot of the hardware stuff. Raspberry Pi? Beagleboard?
- analog31 9y ago
  Got 'em. Those are microcontrollers. So to elaborate a bit more, a microcontroller (MCU) is a single integrated circuit containing a microprocessor CPU plus a fair amount of input/output hardware. These range in sophistication from 8-bit controllers costing less than a dollar and consuming very little electrical current, all the way up to the processors capable of running a cellphone and its likes. There are dozens of MCU's in your house, your car, and the gadgets that you carry around. A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a bunch of logic gates on a chip, that can be "wired" together in almost arbitrary ways. So in a sense it's more primitive than a MCU. The "field programmable" part is that the wiring pattern is programmed on a desktop computer and fed into the IC. This allows creating combinatorial or sequential logic functions that execute extremely quickly and often in parallel. In addition to simple logic gates, modern FPGA's offer other kinds of "cells" such as memory registers. Ironically, people have created wiring patterns that implement a complete microprocessor on an FPGA. This is the extent of my own knowledge, based on product descriptions but no actual experience doing anything with an FPGA.
- wott 9y ago
  So you would fail that interview again :-)
  - cosinetau 9y ago
    No. I would not take a second interview from them.
alunaryak 9y ago
Terasic makes good Altera boards such as the $100 DE0-Nano series, and Digilent makes a decent Xilinx Artix-based dev board for around the same price. They both have decent community support, but just be aware that setting up the dev environment and getting all of the USB cable permissions sorted out (especially on linux) can take time. It's worth sticking with, though, because FPGAs are a blast to mess around with. The sheer compute power available to you is fun. [1] http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=English&CategoryNo=167&No=941 http://www.terasic.com.tw/cgi-bin/page/archive.pl?Language=E... [2] http://store.digilentinc.com/arty-artix-7-fpga-development-board-for-makers-and-hobbyists/ http://store.digilentinc.com/arty-artix-7-fpga-development-b...
chx 9y ago
I have an Embedded Micro Mojo v3 I do not use. It was $75 but if you pay shipping from Vancouver BC to wherever you are, it's yours for free. chx1975 gmail
tikwidd 9y ago
Check out http://www.fpga4fun.com/ http://www.fpga4fun.com/