4 ms·

So, what would be a good FPGA starter kit, just to learn how these things work?

NegativeK 15y ago
Adafruit has an FPGA for sale: http://www.adafruit.com/category/products/451 http://www.adafruit.com/category/products/451 I haven't tried it, as I have a much cheaper but far less documented CPLD sitting around, gathering dust. =p
coffee_bender 15y ago
I haven't tried this particular development board but it looks pretty inexpensive and would be a good starter board. http://www.easyfpga.com/ http://www.easyfpga.com/
theBobMcCormick 15y ago
I've heard good things about the Papilio: http://papilio.cc/ http://papilio.cc/
reemrevnivek 15y ago
To learn how FPGAs work, I'd recommend starting with a cheap Digilent board; see http://www.digilentinc.com/choosing.cfm http://www.digilentinc.com/choosing.cfm - You can get a simple BASYS 2 board for under $100, possibly under $50. This board is the Arduino of the FPGA world. There are tutorials from many schools, lots of good documentation, it's a proven design...you can't go wrong with the Basys board. It does sacrifice performance for simplicity, though - Notably, there's no RAM except for what's on the FPGA. Go up to the Nexys for that, but if you're just interested in learning Verilog/VHDL, the Basys is a fine place to start. To learn how these things work, get a job at a company which uses FPGAs. You'll probably never see one of these parts as a hobbyist. If you're interested in stuff that's actually like this, and want to start right away, then look for a board packaged as a PCIe card. This will be significantly more expensive; think $500 on the extreme low end. NetFPGA is (http://netfpga.org/ http://netfpga.org/) is a good starting point if you're trying to start at a higher level. (Note that the old board is 33MHz PCI and the processor is obsolete; you want the 4x10GBE Virtex 5 part if you're looking for modern tools)
- pnathan 15y ago
  +1 for Digilent. They are a local company for me; they do really great hardware stuff at an affordable price. The founder of the company is a pretty spiffy speaker as well; if you have a chance to see him, it's worth it.
gallamine 15y ago
I had pretty decent success with the products from KNJN (http://www.knjn.com/ http://www.knjn.com/). It's affiliated with FPGA4Fun (http://www.fpga4fun.com/ http://www.fpga4fun.com/) which will help with the learning. Recently I've been looking at the small, low-cost boards by XESS - http://xess.com/prods/prod048.php http://xess.com/prods/prod048.php Keep in mind that writing logic is quite different from programming. It's quite the mind-shift.
mikecsh 15y ago
My interest with FPGAs is more designing processors rather than interfacing with electronics. I like the products from OpalKelly [http://www.opalkelly.com/ http://www.opalkelly.com/] for this as they have a USB interface and C libraries on the computer side, HDL on the FPGA side to abstract the host->FPGA communication allowing you to just focus on your design.
bisrig 15y ago
If you're new to FPGAs or digital design in general, it'd probably be worth your while to pick up a good digital design book. I always liked Wakerly's Digital Design Principles and Practices. I recall that my edition (either 2nd or 3rd) was VHDL-focused, but it looks like the 4th edition has examples in both VHDL and Verilog. There's also the matter of working through the FPGA toolchains, which isn't exactly a walk in the park. Unfortunately I don't have a good tutorial to reference off the top of my head...
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

Adafruit has an FPGA for sale: http://www.adafruit.com/category/products/451 http://www.adafruit.com/category/products/451 I haven't tried it, as I have a much cheaper but far less documented CPLD sitting around, gathering dust. =p

coffee_bender 15y ago

I haven't tried this particular development board but it looks pretty inexpensive and would be a good starter board. http://www.easyfpga.com/ http://www.easyfpga.com/

theBobMcCormick 15y ago

I've heard good things about the Papilio: http://papilio.cc/ http://papilio.cc/

reemrevnivek 15y ago

To learn how FPGAs work, I'd recommend starting with a cheap Digilent board; see http://www.digilentinc.com/choosing.cfm http://www.digilentinc.com/choosing.cfm - You can get a simple BASYS 2 board for under $100, possibly under $50. This board is the Arduino of the FPGA world. There are tutorials from many schools, lots of good documentation, it's a proven design...you can't go wrong with the Basys board. It does sacrifice performance for simplicity, though - Notably, there's no RAM except for what's on the FPGA. Go up to the Nexys for that, but if you're just interested in learning Verilog/VHDL, the Basys is a fine place to start. To learn how these things work, get a job at a company which uses FPGAs. You'll probably never see one of these parts as a hobbyist. If you're interested in stuff that's actually like this, and want to start right away, then look for a board packaged as a PCIe card. This will be significantly more expensive; think $500 on the extreme low end. NetFPGA is (http://netfpga.org/ http://netfpga.org/) is a good starting point if you're trying to start at a higher level. (Note that the old board is 33MHz PCI and the processor is obsolete; you want the 4x10GBE Virtex 5 part if you're looking for modern tools)

pnathan 15y ago
+1 for Digilent. They are a local company for me; they do really great hardware stuff at an affordable price. The founder of the company is a pretty spiffy speaker as well; if you have a chance to see him, it's worth it.

gallamine 15y ago

I had pretty decent success with the products from KNJN (http://www.knjn.com/ http://www.knjn.com/). It's affiliated with FPGA4Fun (http://www.fpga4fun.com/ http://www.fpga4fun.com/) which will help with the learning. Recently I've been looking at the small, low-cost boards by XESS - http://xess.com/prods/prod048.php http://xess.com/prods/prod048.php Keep in mind that writing logic is quite different from programming. It's quite the mind-shift.

mikecsh 15y ago

My interest with FPGAs is more designing processors rather than interfacing with electronics. I like the products from OpalKelly [http://www.opalkelly.com/ http://www.opalkelly.com/] for this as they have a USB interface and C libraries on the computer side, HDL on the FPGA side to abstract the host->FPGA communication allowing you to just focus on your design.

bisrig 15y ago

If you're new to FPGAs or digital design in general, it'd probably be worth your while to pick up a good digital design book. I always liked Wakerly's Digital Design Principles and Practices. I recall that my edition (either 2nd or 3rd) was VHDL-focused, but it looks like the 4th edition has examples in both VHDL and Verilog. There's also the matter of working through the FPGA toolchains, which isn't exactly a walk in the park. Unfortunately I don't have a good tutorial to reference off the top of my head...

deleted 15y ago

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