FPGA learning kit needed

[YanivEE]

Hi,

My name is Yaniv and i just finished my Electrical & Computer engineering degree.

I want to be a FPGA engineer and i need to get a little experience in the next few months (all jobs require 3 + years experience in my country).

It would be really nice if you guys could recommend me about FPGA learning kit.

I know its digilent site but every FPGA learning kit will be welcomed:)

I get the basic point what it is but i dont really understand which one would be better in terms of course material of the internet!

 

Thanks!

[Alex]

You can use Basys 3. There are open class materials 

 

[D@n]

@YanivEE,

Have you seen this post? 

Since then, Digilent has started selling the CMod A7 as well.

The bottom line answer, though, is that it depends upon what you wish to do.

Would you like to learn how to control peripherals?  Then purchase a board with a lot of various peripherals to be controlled on it.  Think of each peripheral on the board as another classroom lesson that  you can learn from by learning how to program it.  The Basys3 does make a good starter board for this purpose.

Another popular board use is to learn how to place software onto an FPGA board, as part of creating a software/hardware accelerator.  If this is what you wish to do, you might find that the Basys3 doesn't have enough SDRAM for you.  Depending on how you wish to build a hardware accelerator, you might want something like the Arty or the Zybo.

If Video is your purpose, I would recommend something like the Nexys Video--having both HDMI inputs and outputs.

If you want something that allows you to breadboard your own circuits instead of learning how to run canned peripherals, try the CMod A7.

In the end, it all comes down to which digital logic experiments you would like to do, and which lessons you would like to learn.

Dan

[Benmo]

D@N

I have followed Cmod A7 Programming Guide for LED Button and it worked great. If i wanted to read a digital input and output a digital output what is a good site to learn how to do this? 

[D@n]

@Benmo,

I love fpga4fun.com!  It's a great site to learn the basics.  You can also find some good information at my own blog site, zipcpu.com.  If you are a beginner, start at the bottom or look at the topics page.

If you are just starting out, then I would recommend that you work with your serial port.  A serial port is a fairly basic project, yet in my own experience everything else is built upon the serial port controller.  I found four serial port projects good for starters: 1) Hello World, 2) an echo project--decoding each character and echoing it back, 3) A line echo--decoding one line at a time, and then blasting the line back, and 4) commanding a bus-based serial port with a large blast of information (I used the Gettysburg address personally).  (You can find my own projects here, should you need to reference them.)

Once you have your serial port working, the next step will be to engineer a way of commanding and controlling your design from that serial port, and likewise to get debugging information back out.  I like to call this a debugging bus, but you might want to read extensively from my blog to understand why and how important such a bus is.  If you search this site, you may find other solutions as well--choose your own.  My approach was the debugging *bus*.  That then gave me access to prove that any peripheral controllers worked, and then later to (eventually) prove that my own CPU worked as well.

Hope this helps!  If you have questions along the way, please feel free to start a new topic and let's discuss them.

Dan

[Notarobot]

I believe that the choice depends on personal goals. If one is looking to learn with the goal to get position in industry then boards based on Zynq will have more value. ARM processors combined with FPGA logic provide incredible leverage to your design saving development time and adding extra features. By choosing FPGA only board you will miss this opportunity. In industry you will be evaluated by ability to deliver your assignment on time and according to specs. Nobody cares how much code did you write and what chip did you use. Hardware is cheap compare to the cost of labor.

I would recommend Digilent Zybo boards or Avnet MicroZed. Both boards are well documented and supplied with tutorials. In my opinion, the Zybo board is perfect for educational crowd, while  MicroZed is better for practical industrial applications.

[xc6lx45]

I guess you can spend months with a CMOD A7 (or any other modern board) and not get bored...

Combining FPGA with embedded studies might be a good idea - note that you can easily run a Microblaze softcore CPU on the Artix FPGA. So I can dabble with embedded C without spending another penny on a Zynq board (the Zynq is a much more capable computing platform).

[Notarobot]

I think we all agree that investing in education is investining in the future. We also can agree that Zynq boards have ten times more potential than let say Artix FPGA. Is it worth extra $120?

No doubts from my perspective.

Exploring Zynq capabilities is fun for me, besides it helps to see new applications = new proposals. Customers like constant potential, improvement not obsolescence.

[D@n]

@Notarobot,

No, we're not in agreement.  I would argue that a regular FPGA board, not an FPGA+ARM board, is a better board for a beginner.  First, it's harder to debug an FPGA+ARM board.  There's lots of opportunities to cause the board to freeze up, and not as many ways to rescue it.  Second, it's also harder to simulate such a board.  Third, it's more difficult to integrate your data flows with the processor on such a board.  For these reasons (and more), my recommendation for beginning students is that they start with a more traditional FPGA-only board.

Dan

[zygot]

How's that popular comics character catch phrase go? Aghh M-U-S-T  R-E-S-I-S-T !!!  No I can't

I agree with

4 hours ago, xc6lx45 said:

I guess you can spend months with a CMOD A7 ... and not get bored...

I agree (with some minor equivocation) with

2 hours ago, Notarobot said:

Zynq boards have ten times more potential than let say Artix FPGA

I agree with

2 hours ago, D@n said:

a regular FPGA board, not an FPGA+ARM board, is a better board for a beginner

Gosh, I like them all. For someone wanting to do some embedded programming but interested in extending a traditional uC with custom logic and interfaces the Zynq is hard to beat. Personally, I like the Zedboard though it is beyond the budget of most people just wanting to expand their horizons. Zynq definitely adds a level of complexity but it is well supported by Xilinx tools. For those wanting to learn digital design and FPGA development there are a lot of choices if you are willing to put in the work to self-educate. I like the CMOD-A7 and DE0-NANO form factors and price for general purpose projects. Initial investment is low but there's a lot of IO to expand utility and try out different interfaces using inexpensive modules and a bit of breadboarding. Frankly, if one wants to play around with DSP and communications or motor control there are cheap Piccolo or similar development kits that are a quicker way to get started. One thing that FPGA boards are unlikely to provide is an easy platform, for anyone not willing to put in the time and effort to learn new complicated technology, to accomplish nifty gizmos. But digital design is what make all of that stuff possible and what you can do and learn about, doing nothing but digital design,  is almost endless.

As cheaper Zynq devices get rolled out ( like the Z-7007S ) you will find it becoming a harder platform to resist for beginners and general purpose projects alike. As someone who'd rather do my designs in an HDL I have to admit that the Zynq is a sweet product for developing your embedded chops.

P.S. I learned a lot from those DSP development boards of the past but heck... you can have more fun with an FPGA or an FPGA with ARMs.