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FPGAs are the coolest thing since sliced bread and no one knows how to use ‘em. That’s not quite true, but to say that there’s a steep learning curve in getting to the mystical “holy grail” of Verilog/VHDL is an understatement.

I read another blog here, but it quickly proved itself to be a little too advanced for me and leaves out some basics beginners (like me right now) need to get started. The guy has years of ASIC development and in transferring that over to FPGAs he leaves out a lot of “obvious to a seasoned vet” type things. I’ll be filling in those areas here.

I will become a subject matter expert in the field of (redundant acronym warning) Field Programmable Gate Arrays within a year, so hang on because its going to be a fast, fun filled ride!

What you need to get started
NOTE: Ok.. understandably, there are a lot of FPGA vendors out there including Xilinx and Altera. My personal preference is Xilinx b/c they well, invented FPGAs and do a hell of a job advertising. The upside is that because we’re using standardized high-level languages such as Verilog/VHDL, all the designs made on any one platform will be transferrable (should be assuming you’re following abstract form) to a different platform.

1 - FPGA Development Board
For ease of explanation, i’ll suggest you invest in the XILINX Virtex ML-505 development board because its what i’m using. Yes, I know its $1300, but it has everything you could possibly need and then some.

If the price is prohibitive (and it is for me, but my company provided it for me), you can pick up any number of the “off the street” boards. Try the SPARTAN-3 Development Board from www.digilentinc.com. I have the x-board CPLD development kit they provide and its proven to be a solid platform.

I’ll purchase this one (SPARTAN-3 Board) in the next couple weeks and make the necessary additions to what i’ve already done on the ML505 for those who have it, and not the 505. As for a comparison, the ML505 Virtex-5 chip is ~$550 while the SPARTAN-3 chip is ~$45…

NOTE: No matter what FPGA development board you get, ensure you can configure the device via USB. I’ll repeat that, ENSURE YOU CAN CONFIGURE VIA USB. Its really important because the official xilinx JTAG adapter that uses USB is pretty expensive > $150. If you get the ML505, you can afford it, so go ahead and get the official adapter, otherwise, ignore it.

The boards from digilent have the USB based configuration (when you download your compiled project into the FPGA) option.