how to start FPGA's

[pavan]

Dear All,
I am a fresh graduate from India. i ve done my BE in
Electricals and Electronics. i am very much fond of FPGA's, DSP's and
Embedded systems. I want to learn them but the institutes teaching
them are very sparse. So can anybody suggest me what all i may have to
know before giving it a start and please suggest me as to how to start.
I need this because once i get a path i can slowly do it on myself
instead of starting without knowing anything about the topic. please do
suggest me even the books for learning FPGA. And requirements.

Thanking You

Regards
Pavan Narendra

 

Hi,
pavan i will suggest u,that if u can visit CDAC,Pune.Or u can try
Department of electronics,pune univercity for VLSI course.I am sure
CDAC will provide u good teaching as weel good recruitment too.

 

[pavan]

thanks alot Mohan, but am sorry to inform u that am working and hence
cant do a full-time course. so please suggest me so that i can do it
part-time or self study. hoping to see a reply from you.

thanks a ton

pavan

 

[Benjamin Todd]

http://www.sli-institute.ac.uk/
have some excellent distance learning courses (fairly expensive though)

"pavan" <pavannaren@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141993843.111804.267310@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

thanks alot Mohan, but am sorry to inform u that am working and hence
cant do a full-time course. so please suggest me so that i can do it
part-time or self study. hoping to see a reply from you.

thanks a ton

pavan

 

[David R Brooks]

pavan wrote:

Dear All,
I am a fresh graduate from India. i ve done my BE in
Electricals and Electronics. i am very much fond of FPGA's, DSP's and
Embedded systems. I want to learn them but the institutes teaching
them are very sparse. So can anybody suggest me what all i may have to
know before giving it a start and please suggest me as to how to start.
I need this because once i get a path i can slowly do it on myself
instead of starting without knowing anything about the topic. please do
suggest me even the books for learning FPGA. And requirements.

Pavan,

Just about all FPGA design nowadays is done in HDL (hardware description
language). Basically, there are 2 of these: VHDL & Verilog. It's a
religious war: you can choose either. Likewise there are 2 major FPGA
vendors: Xilinx & Altera. Again, choose.
My experience is with VHDL & Xilinx, so with that said, here goes:
Download the "Webpack" from Xilinx' site: this will give you a basic
development environment. You'll also need a VHDL textbook, I recommend
Ashenden's "Designer's Guide to VDHL".
You can design using Webpack's schematic editor, but I suggest you
don't. Reasons:
1. If you design in pure VHDL, you remain vendor independent. (You will
probably have to get vendor specific at the very low level, but keep it
to a minimum, so your designs are portable).
2. Several people on comp.arch.fpga report problems with the schematic
editor.

So, you can put together a design, using your text editor. To make it
run, you need signal sources (a "testbench"). This is more VHDL, to
which your design is connected.
With a complete testbench, you can compile & simulate using ModelSim (a
Xilinx specific version is included with WebPack), or other tools.
Once your design simulates correctly, you can synthesise it (the XST
tool in WebPack), & get a bit-file ready to load into the FPGA.

Prototyping boards for the simpler FPGA's (Spartan) are available from
Xilinx for about $120.

Good luck...

 

[Mike Treseler]

David R Brooks wrote:

With a complete testbench, you can compile & simulate using ModelSim (a
Xilinx specific version is included with WebPack), or other tools.
Once your design simulates correctly, you can synthesise it (the XST
tool in WebPack), & get a bit-file ready to load into the FPGA.

I agree that learning to test your code with
a vhdl simulator deserves primary attention.
Once you know how write and verify your
own code, all else is details.


-- Mike Treseler