Book and a starter kit

[Amit]

Hello,

I'm coming from a software background an for master program I have
switched to EE and need to learn digital concepts so one of the
language I'm supposed to learn is VHDL. I will appreciate it if
somebody could advise me on a book and also a kit or board that I can
use and program using VHDL.

I will need to start with:

Programmable LOgic chips to study: 16V8, Altera Max 5000/7000,
Flex10K/cyclone.

but honestly have no idea where from should I order it or buy it. I
looked at the boards but they come in different variety and cannot make
a decision. Your help is truly appreciated.




Thanks,
Amit

 

[Mike Treseler]

Amit wrote:

I'm coming from a software background an for master program I have
switched to EE and need to learn digital concepts so one of the
language I'm supposed to learn is VHDL.

Is that what you *want* to do?

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups/search?q=vhdl+learn+simulator+board


-- Mike Treseler

 

[Amit]

Thanks Mike but what is this?!

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups/search?q=vhdl+learn+simulator+board

Mike Treseler wrote:

Amit wrote:

I'm coming from a software background an for master program I have
switched to EE and need to learn digital concepts so one of the
language I'm supposed to learn is VHDL.

Is that what you *want* to do?

http://groups-beta.google.com/groups/search?q=vhdl+learn+simulator+board


-- Mike Treseler

 

[Derek Simmons]

There seems to be two camps, Xilinx or Altera but there are other
companies these just happen to be the most popular. You should find out
what they are using at your school.

You mentioned a couple of different Altera devices, you can download a
limited version of their EDA software, QuartusII from their website
(www.altera.com). You should also download ModelSim AE. QuartusII comes
with some tutorials and if you look around their website they also have
some online. You can construct some simple projects and run them
through the simulator.

As far as the book you could save yourself some money if you picked up
a copy of what you will be using in class. I'll describe what I have
on my bookshelf and they have survived a couple of rounds me cleaning
house (getting rid of books holding lesser value).

The first book I'm going to list has insightful discussion about
designing with FPGAs. It fills in the gaps of things you might have
learned if you had taken a course with a seasoned professional instead
of teaching yourself. The first book is "The Design Warrior's Guide
to FPGAs: Devices, Tools and Flows" by Clive "Max" Maxfield, ISBN
0-7506-7604-3.

The second book is "Essential VHDL: RTL Synthesis Done Right" by
Sundar Rajan, ISBN 0-9669590-0-0, a couple of websites:
www.vahana.com/vhdl.htm and www.clbooks.com/specials/vhdl/ . This book
is crash course in VHDL and gives you a lot useful information. It is a
short book but I think it gives a really good introduction to the
language. Because it was a smaller book for a while I traveled with a
copy because it didn't take up a lot of room and it was light to
carry.

The third book is "VHDL Programming by Example" by Douglas Perry
ISBN 0-07-140070-2. It is still an introductory text but it is more
compressive then "Essential VHDL".

Fourth book, "The Designer's Guide to VHDL" by Peter Ashenden. I
have an older copy so I'm not going to give the ISBN. If you look it
up on Amazon you can find the latest edition's ISBN. This is the most
comprehensive book I have, I keep it for that reason, but I'm not
sure if I would recommend it to someone just starting out and teaching
themselves.

Fifth book is "Digital Systems Design Using VHDL" by Charles H.
Roth, Jr, ISBN 0-534-95099-X. I probably keep this book more for
sentimental reasons then because I still use it. It was the first book
I found that had some practical examples that I could relate to and
gave meaning to some of the things I was learning from other books.

The next two books I think are worth mentioning because I think it is
important to have a some knowledge of computer architecture. The first
one is "Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals" by M. Morris Mano
and Charles R. Kime and the other is "Computer Organization and
Design - The Hardware/Software Interface" by David A Patterson and
John L. Hennessy. The first book "Logic and Computer Design
Fundamentals" starts the ball rolling describing design from a
traditional approach and the second book, "Computer Organization and
Design" picks up where the first leaves off. If you work through and
follow the discussion of these two books when you are done with the
second one you should have implement a RISC processor with pipelining
and a cache.

On buying a board I would wait until you have tried a couple of designs
and have worked you way through them because there are a lot of boards
out there and what differentiates them is the supporting hardware the
vendors have added. Some will come with a video DAC for VGA, USB
interface, compact flash and/or Ethernet and any other hardware you can
imagine. It is better to wait until you know what you exactly need.