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Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

joelw.id.au

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Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#31

Post by FigBug »

tomjen3 wrote: post #8

My problem with FPGA is two fold - I have no idea what to use them for and I have no idea how to use them. Yet with all these mentions here I fear that I may become unemployable as a software developer if I don't keep up.

They are used a lot in audio processing - digital mixers, effect boxes etc. In a digital mixer, you'll need to get 32+ channels of audio encoded into the correct format, mixed, effects added, re-encoded, and back out in under 10ms, hopefully a lot less. The encoders/decoders and the main mix will usually be in a FPGA. The effects will have their own DSPs.

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#33

Post by analog31 »

What would folks recommend if my only goal is learning? I do some microcontroller development, so I'm aware of the need for an inexpensive board and (preferably) free tools. I'm OK with a free tool that has a limited program size, which I've never managed to fill up.

Naturally I say my only goal is learning, but... I wouldn't mind finding a development board that's small and cheap enough that it could be pushed into small run production as a component in a pinch.

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#34

Post by deadgrey19 »

I fear that this article misses out on one of the most important aspects of cheap FPGA boards, which is the software stack. Do not be fooled. There is no freeware, open-source, GNU, LLVM etc software in the FPGA world. You will need to use the manufacturers very own, proprietary, place & route (and often synthesis too) software.

For this reason, go with Xilinx or Altera who both offer free versions of their development kits. Also, make sure that the particular part you have is supported by the free kit. Often only the smallest and simplest parts are supported.

Form a quick scan of the website, it seems that Lattice-Semi still does not offer free licenses of development tools. Years ago I bought a cheap ($99) Lattice-Semi PCIe/1G FPGA board, this board is still useless as I can't get the software without a $1000 license for the software kits. Although the board was cheap, it's nothing without the software.

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#35

Post by zhemao »

Relys wrote: post #2

I used the Altera DE1 in my college EE class a few years ago and am interested in getting back into writing VHDL to help learn more about reverse engineering on a hardware level. Should I go ahead and get the DE1-SoC since I already have experience with Quartus II or should I go for one of the Spartans (which I know nothing about). If I go with Altera is a DE2 worth the investment (it's 2x the price)?

The DE1-SoC is definitely worth it for the ARM HPS. A hard processor which can run Linux attached to an FPGA is a very powerful combination. Check out http://zhehaomao.com/project/2014/01/02/fpga-series.html for examples of stuff you can do with it.

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#36

Post by sliverstorm »

jessydiamondman wrote: post #7

I got interested in FPGAs a few years ago out of a desire to design a toy processor for a Coursera class. I had a similar issue figuring out what board(s) to get, mostly because I didn't know what the number of gates could actually implement. I too ended up with an Atlys board, which is an impressive little beast. When it came to learning an HDL, I got in contact with several people who worked on FPGAs and learned th…

Usually most people just cave and use Windows, on which ISE works a bit better.

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#37

Post by sliverstorm »

linuxlizard wrote: post #16
lvh wrote: post #3

I wish I knew what this person was using them for :-) Has anyone made a similar comparative study of my biggest gripe with FPGAs: the quality of the (more or less mandatory) development software? In my experience, it's pretty horrendously terrible :(

Yeah, tools from hardware vendors are notoriously awful. Embedded debuggers (JTAG) are almost always terrible, too.

Embedded debuggers (JTAG) are almost always terrible

Weeeell debugging is difficult by nature. No such thing as code stepping, all you can really do is examine waveforms.

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#38

Post by mmagin »

rjsw wrote: post #27
hippich wrote: post #26

Is there resources where people share their FPGA projects? I really like idea of FPGA but have hard time to find real world project for it to start my introduction with.

Have a look on OpenCores - http://opencores.org/

I hear the OpenCores website is nearly unmaintained. Someone went and made a github clone of all the code:

https://github.com/freecores

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#39

Post by sliverstorm »

analog31 wrote: post #33

What would folks recommend if my only goal is learning? I do some microcontroller development, so I'm aware of the need for an inexpensive board and (preferably) free tools. I'm OK with a free tool that has a limited program size, which I've never managed to fill up. Naturally I say my only goal is learning, but... I wouldn't mind finding a development board that's small and cheap enough that it could be pushed into…

If you are starting completely from scratch? Go cheap. Basys/Nexys or something like that. HDMI ports and ethernet ports and 1GB RAM will not be useful to you if you have never written HDL before.

Give up on free tools...

Re: Cheap FPGA Development Boards: What to look for

#40

Post by dankoss »

FigBug wrote: post #31
tomjen3 wrote: post #8

My problem with FPGA is two fold - I have no idea what to use them for and I have no idea how to use them. Yet with all these mentions here I fear that I may become unemployable as a software developer if I don't keep up.

They are used a lot in audio processing - digital mixers, effect boxes etc. In a digital mixer, you'll need to get 32+ channels of audio encoded into the correct format, mixed, effects added, re-encoded, and back out in under 10ms, hopefully a lot less. The encoders/decoders and the main mix will usually be in a FPGA. The effects will have their own DSPs.

In my experience FPGAs are broadly used as "glue" chips to interface between microcontrollers, DSPs, codecs, and other hardware elements (encoders, LEDs, etc). Technically these are called CPLDs but depending on how much work they do, they may use a larger family with more logic cells and memory.

Basically if you need to interface with any digital hardware that isn't natively supported by your microcontroller/CPU/DSP, you'll probably want an FPGA to do it unless you have enough resources to write a bit-banged interface in the micro.

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