Summer with fpgas

Hi,

I'm a beginner in the fpga world.I've been reading up some of the
books listed in this group in other posts, and doing basic designs
(like contollers, ALUs etc). Although the books and my school lab have
helped me get started with fpga design, I'm far, far away from being
_good_ at it.  Any suggestions on which direction I should be going
in?

IMHO, the only way to get there would be to spend more and more time
'getting my hands dirty' so to say. Books don't help beyond a point.

So I'm also looking for a good fpga board I can use over summer and
more....

Some suggestions were the spartan-3 starter kit, XSK40 and the XSK95.
Being a poor student, I can't afford anything else (and being a
beginner I guess I may not be able to _use_ anything else :) )

Which one would you suggest I should go for?

Thanks,
Kunal

Kunal,

The "Spartan 3E Starter Board" from digilentinc.com is used by quite a
number of schools and universities.

As such, 'google' for this shows 131 hits, with complete courses with
labs from University of Arizona, etc. etc.

$149.

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3EBOARD&Nav1=Products&Nav2=Programmable

Austin

On Apr 19, 12:14 pm, Kunal <kunal.yadwad...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Some suggestions were the spartan-3 starter kit, XSK40 and the XSK95.
> Being a poor student, I can't afford anything else (and being a
> beginner I guess I may not be able to _use_ anything else :) )

The Spartan-3 kit is pretty good, complete out of the box, and you'll
find some projects for it around the net.  I would spend the extra $20
to get an XC3S400 chip on it though (get it from Digilent rather than
Xilinx).

I see they are also offerings the XC3S1000, though you could get that
chip cheaper on the nexys board.  The nexys board is interesting if
you want to play with USB for high-bandwidth things, and it has better
digital I/O's.  But it lacks the serial, keyboard, and VGA ports of
the S3kit.  Also, if you go that route you may want to buy one of
their great-deal power supplies and parallel port programmer cables so
you aren't completely dependent on the USB for power and programming.

Which brings up the point: if your development computer doesn't have a
parallel port, get they nexys rather than the s3kit.

On Apr 19, 12:44 pm, Austin Lesea <aus...@xilinx.com> wrote:
> Kunal,
>
> The "Spartan 3E Starter Board" from digilentinc.com is used by quite a
> number of schools and universities.
>
> As such, 'google' for this shows 131 hits, with complete courses with
> labs from University of Arizona, etc. etc.
>
> $149.
>
> http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3EBOARD&Nav1=Pro...
>
> Austin


Unless someone really needs an S3E chip, I might stay away from that
board, as part of its schematics (around the USB chip) are withheld,
limiting your options for programming and communicating with it to
what is officially supported or laboriously reverse engineered.

On Apr 19, 1:48 pm, cs_post...@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Apr 19, 12:44 pm, Austin Lesea <aus...@xilinx.com> wrote:
>
> > Kunal,
>
> > The "Spartan 3E Starter Board" from digilentinc.com is used by quite a
> > number of schools and universities.
>
> > As such, 'google' for this shows 131 hits, with complete courses with
> > labs from University of Arizona, etc. etc.
>
> > $149.
>
> >http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3EBOARD&Nav1=Pro...
>
> > Austin
>
> Unless someone really needs an S3E chip, I might stay away from that
> board, as part of its schematics (around the USB chip) are withheld,
> limiting your options for programming and communicating with it to
> what is officially supported or laboriously reverse engineered.

In fairness, I should add the substantial memories and display to the
"unless one needs" consideration.

All of these boards have tradeoffs of goodies vs. issues

On 19 Apr 2007 11:48:07 -0700, cs_posting@hotmail.com wrote:

>On Apr 19, 12:44 pm, Austin Lesea <aus...@xilinx.com> wrote:
>> Kunal,
>>
>> The "Spartan 3E Starter Board" from digilentinc.com is used by quite a
>> number of schools and universities.
>>
>> As such, 'google' for this shows 131 hits, with complete courses with
>> labs from University of Arizona, etc. etc.
>>
>> $149.
>>
>> http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=S3EBOARD&Nav1=Pro...
>>
>> Austin
>
>
>Unless someone really needs an S3E chip, I might stay away from that
>board, as part of its schematics (around the USB chip) are withheld,
>limiting your options for programming and communicating with it to
>what is officially supported or laboriously reverse engineered.

How totally pathetic - who could possibly gain anything by hiding part of a devboard....

On 2007-04-19, Kunal <kunal.yadwadkar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Some suggestions were the spartan-3 starter kit, XSK40 and the XSK95.
> Being a poor student, I can't afford anything else (and being a
> beginner I guess I may not be able to _use_ anything else :) )

I've recently come across the Altera DE1 board which also seems like
a very good deal. Among its good nice features are:
512Kbyte SRAM memory - No need for a cumbersome SDRAM controller or DDR
                       controller
Audio input/output   - Haven't found this on a low end Xilinx board yet
SD card interface    - Nice for storing audio files for the above :)
Lots of leds
Downside: No Ethernet.

(I'd love to hear about a Xilinx board with Audio input/output in
the same price range. We are interested in such a board for a course
we are giving since it would be nice if students could afford the
board.)

Personally, I would also like to point out that getting DDR memory
to work is not straightforward. If DDR memory is your only external
memory (and you are building a design which needs more memory than
is available on the FPGA) you are going to be in trouble. (Unless
you buy the EDK which can automatically generate a design with
a DDR memory controller for you.) DDR is complicated by the fact
that you have to run it quite fast if you are going to follow
the standard.

In contrast, SRAM is very easy to interface to and SDRAM can be
done with a moderate effort.


/Andreas

Mike,

Well, the blank sheet (3) is for the USB interface.

Not sure why...

http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards/files/s3e_starter_schematic.pdf

Is the previous revision of the schematic, with page 3 shown.

If it is proprietary (now, in this revision), then I suppose someone
else owns the USB interface design, and they have rights to it we must
protect.

Still, I do find it odd.

If someone really wants to look at a USB to FPGA interface, not only is
there the previous revision of the board schematic, but thousands of
them out there on the web.

Austin

Andreas,

If I have my choice, I hope he chooses a Xilinx board.

I do not mind one bit that he uses an Altera board to learn about FPGAs:
 it will be his first job that will determine who he will get to use, it
will probably not be his choice!

So, the more that know how to use FPGA's, the better.

I only offer up the Digilent board because there have been tens of
thousands sold to students. The resulting ecosystem has some benefits.

Austin

On Apr 19, 6:51 pm, Austin Lesea <aus...@xilinx.com> wrote:
> Andreas,
>
> If I have my choice, I hope he chooses a Xilinx board.
>
> I do not mind one bit that he uses an Altera board to learn about FPGAs:
>  it will be his first job that will determine who he will get to use, it
> will probably not be his choice!
>
> So, the more that know how to use FPGA's, the better.
>
> I only offer up the Digilent board because there have been tens of
> thousands sold to students. The resulting ecosystem has some benefits.
>
> Austin

Hey all,

Thanks a lot for your help! Andreas, your Altera DE1 board seems
really interesting especially with the audio out. But I guess Austin
is right too. If xilinx is indeed a more popular choice for students,
there'll probably be more accessible projects, docs etc. to help me
out. Anyway, I'll try and find out how popular this altera kit is too,
and then come up with a conclusion.

That aside, the nexys one looks good to me, primarily because it has
the usb port too, and also 'cos it's all i can afford right now :(.
I'd love to have the S3E, but...............


Thanks a million once again!
cheers,
Kunal