FPGA design from scratchI have been designing ASICs for more than 15 years. A few years ago I started to realize that there is another player in town and that is the FPGA circuit. With increasing NRE costs and with the long turn-around times, ASIC designs have become high-risk projects. At the same time FPGAs are getting bigger and faster and many companies have therefore decided to only use FPGAs. I also realized that I have to learn how to design using FPGAs, if I were to get any consulting jobs, especially here in Sweden. This is my story of how I hopefully will learn to use FPGAs in my future designs.An interactive meeting placeI have decided to document the learning process in a blog, successes and setbacks. Hopefully it will help the next person to avoid a few pitfalls. A would like the blog to be interactive and not a one-way document. I invite all of you, newbies to professionals to ask questions, make comments and suggestions for subjects you are missing.Let's get startedThe first thing I did was to order a PowerPC and MicroBlaze development kit DO-ML403-EDK-ISE-USB-EC from Xilinx.
The kit included: * ML403 Development Platform including the Virtex-4 FX12 FPGA * Xilinx Embedded Development Kit * Platform Studio Embedded Tool Suite * Xilinx ISE WebPack FPGA Design Software * Development Kit Reference CD * Programming (JTAG) and serial cables Read more in my blog |
