FPGA Design for Software Engineers • Hacker News Board

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#11

Post by satori99 » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:16 AM UTC

mlevental wrote: post #5

sideshowmel wrote: post #2

I've been looking for something like this for a while. It's hard to break into FPGA design coming from a Software Engineering viewpoint, but I think it teaches how the machine REALLY works and can produce better Software developers.

how is that true? which component in a modern processor is akin to an fpga or any ip deployed to an fpga?

I think OP is looking at this the other way around -- meaning that it is perfectly possible to create a soft-core CPU on an FPGA, which is a great way to understand what any processor actually does.

I know this, because I started learning and tinkering with this sort of thing a year or so ago, with no prior experience with electronics or hardware design, or a formal comp-sci education.

I had decades of programming experience already, but I think I have learned more about the fundamentals of computer science while playing with cheap FPGAs, than I have by just writing code.

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#12

Post by anyfoo » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #3

sideshowmel wrote: post #2

I've been looking for something like this for a while. It's hard to break into FPGA design coming from a Software Engineering viewpoint, but I think it teaches how the machine REALLY works and can produce better Software developers.

I found Digital Design by Mano and Ciletti to be a nice introduction to the basic building blocks of digital circuits. Four weeks later I'm studying laplace transforms and transfer functions please send help.

Hah. I went down the same path! I started with some "light" signal processing for an FPGA based project, and now, 2 years or so later, I'm deep into Laplace and z-transforms (and the foundations required for that).

You might enjoy those books, available fully online: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#13

Post by alexhutcheson » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

mlevental wrote: post #5

sideshowmel wrote: post #2

I've been looking for something like this for a while. It's hard to break into FPGA design coming from a Software Engineering viewpoint, but I think it teaches how the machine REALLY works and can produce better Software developers.

how is that true? which component in a modern processor is akin to an fpga or any ip deployed to an fpga?

All the digital logic building blocks of a processor, from comparators to ALUs up to branch predictors and pipelines, can be defined and wired together in an HDL. If you have a sufficiently large FPGA, then you can "run" that HDL specification on the FPGA to get a working processor.

It's pretty common for computer engineering students to implement a simple RISC processor (often a simplified MIPS) on an FPGA as a class project. In my experience it was a fantastic way to learn the basics of computer architecture.

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#14

Post by srjilarious » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

omeze wrote: post #9

This is a pretty nice tutorial! My courses in FPGA design in school taught me a ton about 1) concurrency and 2) good state machine design. In modern backend web development these topics receive so little attention (from interviewing all the way to writing technical specs, I've rarely encountered these topics brought up explicitly) but are important. I was a bit hesitant for this guide to suggest using C++ since I ten…

I agree about using C++ for actual ip block implementation. My experience has been pretty mixed. Mostly because the tools (Intel HLS in my case) don't always give you a great idea of what constructs cause you to generate inefficient hdl code.

For example, passing a variable by reference in one context cost me an extra 10% logic blocks, and in another lowered it by 10%. It became a bit of a shotgun approach to optimising

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#15

Post by anyfoo » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #6

I recently got a TinyFPGA-BX, and have been slowly working through the tutorials. The amusing thing is that, for the actual applications I'm working on, a contemporary microcontroller can actually keep up just fine, and is easier for me to comprehend. Still, one of these days, a use will for an FPGA will crop up for which I'll be glad that I learned.

Interfacing with arbitrary hardware, for example random LCD devices with sometimes proprietary on the wire protocols. (Don't have a graphics chip for that screen? Make yourself a graphics chip for that screen!) Or Digital Signal Processing.

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#16

Post by bcheung » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:35 AM UTC

sideshowmel wrote: post #2

I've been looking for something like this for a while. It's hard to break into FPGA design coming from a Software Engineering viewpoint, but I think it teaches how the machine REALLY works and can produce better Software developers.

I've been going through the book "But How Do It Know" (not a typo) and it's a great introduction on how to build a CPU from scratch starting from basic transistor working up higher and higher levels of abstraction using a bottom up approach. You don't need a lot of math to understand it at all and is a fairly easy read.

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#17

Post by vvanders » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

Great article, I wish the discussions around clocks had gone a bit more into how the tradeoff of pipelining vs longest operation ends up impacting designs. That and SRAM vs DRAM access latencies were the things that really connected the dots from how performance optimization on the software side of things is rooted in physical hardware limitations.

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#18

Post by danharaj » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 1:42 AM UTC

rrss wrote: post #7

danharaj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Digital Design by Mano and Ciletti to be a nice introduction to the basic building blocks of digital circuits. Four weeks later I'm studying laplace transforms and transfer functions please send help.

Good on you, every idiot can count to one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Widlar#Fairchild_Semicondu...

What?

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#19

Post by markrages » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

rrss wrote: post #7

danharaj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Digital Design by Mano and Ciletti to be a nice introduction to the basic building blocks of digital circuits. Four weeks later I'm studying laplace transforms and transfer functions please send help.

Good on you, every idiot can count to one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Widlar#Fairchild_Semicondu...

This audience is software developers. They will not have an appreciation for Widlar's genius.

Re: FPGA Design for Software Engineers

#20

Post by jeremycw » Thu, Oct 17, 2019, 2:06 AM UTC

I wrote tetris in verilog that can output to VGA 10 years ago for a university project. The code is here: https://github.com/jeremycw/tetris-verilog for anyone interested. Comments are sparse but it might be interesting for anyone looking for some example code that's relatable.