FPGA BOARD QUESTION

[RealInfo]

Hi all
I need to buy a FPGA evaluation board to practice my comeback
to the FPGA design with VHDL.


Can you offer me a board that will do that
based on your experience ?

Thanks

EC

 

[Chris Maryan]

On Dec 3, 6:01 am, RealInfo <therighti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all
I need to buy a FPGA evaluation board to practice my comeback
to the FPGA design with VHDL.

Can you offer me a board that will do that
 based on your experience ?

Thanks

EC

You really haven't said much. The board you need is greatly dependent
on your skill level, your planned projects, the things you want to
interface with, etc. It could span anywhere from a tiny Spartan 3
board to a monster Virtex 6 board with PCIe, and a software radio
front end. If you are just getting started, there are a bunch of $100-
$500 boards listed on the Xilinx and Altera websites.

Chris

 

[rickman]

On Dec 3, 6:01 am, RealInfo <therighti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all
I need to buy a FPGA evaluation board to practice my comeback
to the FPGA design with VHDL.

Can you offer me a board that will do that
based on your experience ?

Thanks

EC

Here is one that is pretty low cost... at least if you have the right
computer to use it with.

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/developmenthardware/developmentkits/xp2breviadevelopmentkit.cfm

It is a small XP2 flash FPGA, about 5 or 6 kLUTs. But that is plenty
enough to get started. It includes a 256 kB SPI flash and a 128 kB
SRAM along with a serial port interface and the prerequisite LEDs,
push buttons and dip switches. One down side to this low priced kit
is the lack of a real programming cable. They give you a parallel
port cable, no doubt an ancient over-stock left from the dot com
bubble 10 years ago. But if you still have a parallel port on your PC
(they tell you a USB parallel adapter won't work) you might just get
by with this $49 kit!

One cool thing about a flash FPGA is that it will boot up with no
other chips and no cable. I find that pretty useful myself.

Rick

 

[Gabor]

On Dec 4, 1:04 pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Dec 3, 6:01 am, RealInfo <therighti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all
I need to buy a FPGA evaluation board to practice my comeback
to the FPGA design with VHDL.

Can you offer me a board that will do that
 based on your experience ?

Thanks

EC

Here is one that is pretty low cost... at least if you have the right
computer to use it with.

http://www.latticesemi.com/products/developmenthardware/developmentki...

It is a small XP2 flash FPGA, about 5 or 6 kLUTs.  But that is plenty
enough to get started.  It includes a 256 kB SPI flash and a 128 kB
SRAM along with a serial port interface and the prerequisite LEDs,
push buttons and dip switches.  One down side to this low priced kit
is the lack of a real programming cable.  They give you a parallel
port cable, no doubt an ancient over-stock left from the dot com
bubble 10 years ago.  But if you still have a parallel port on your PC
(they tell you a USB parallel adapter won't work) you might just get
by with this $49 kit!

One cool thing about a flash FPGA is that it will boot up with no
other chips and no cable.  I find that pretty useful myself.

Rick

I bought one of these at the introductory price of $29.99

It comes with a parallel cable and a serial cable. My new computer
has neither
a parallel nor a serial port so I hooked it to my ancient Toshiba
Satellite 4600.
The kit is pretty minimal from an I/O standpoint. There are just
enough LED's
(8) to make a miserable light show. The demos with the kit were all
about
the Mico8 processor and using the Lattice Reveal analyzer. However
there
is a connector with enough I/O's to possibly hook up something useful.

By the way, I know it's not as much fun as seeing a design come alive
in hardware, but you can get started with VHDL with no more than
a free software download from any major FPGA vendor and use
the castrated version of simulator that comes with it.

-- Gabor

 

[John Adair]

From our stable the Pomaddie3, Drigmorn2 and Drigmorn3 boards are good
ones to get going with VHDL. All three of feature traffic light LEDs
to allow designs based on light sequencies and they can all power from
USB making it easy if you want to play. Details of these and other
products http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/boardproducts.html.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.

On Dec 3, 11:01 am, RealInfo <therighti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all
I need to buy a FPGA evaluation board to practice my comeback
to the FPGA design with VHDL.

Can you offer me a board that will do that
 based on your experience ?

Thanks

EC

 

[Bryan]

Digilent offers low-cost FPGA boards with VHDL or Verilog textbook
written for that board.
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,790&Prod=BASYS2
http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400,789&Prod=NEXYS2

Bryan


On Dec 3, 6:01 am, RealInfo <therighti...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all
I need to buy a FPGA evaluation board to practice my comeback
to the FPGA design with VHDL.

Can you offer me a board that will do that
 based on your experience ?

Thanks

EC

 

[d_s_klein]

On Dec 4, 12:20 pm, Gabor <ga...@alacron.com> wrote:

By the way, I know it's not as much fun as seeing a design come alive
in hardware, but you can get started with VHDL with no more than
a free software download from any major FPGA vendor and use
the castrated version of simulator that comes with it.

-- Gabor

The Ashenden book (which IMnsHO is an excellent VHDL reference) has a
not-brain-dead simulator included.

RK