FPGA getting started

[Rickertsen2]

At this point i have a bit of experience with microcontrollers. I would really like to start to learn FPGAs. Can anybody point me in the right direction?

What is a good brand to start with?
Where can i find some introductory info on VHDL Verilog or whatever it is you program these things with.

I need something with a cheap dev board bc i'm back in school for the year and don't have time for a job. Consequently i'm REALLY broke. I am looking for something that supports schematic entry as well as a language.

[BrianBSL]

I have a Xilinx Spartan-3 dev board, they cost around $100 including JTAG and power supply (http://www.digilentinc.com/info/S3Board.cfm). Why Xilinx? Because thats what we use at school, so I was forced to buy that board for a class. Plus its probably one of the best known FPGA and CPLD companies. The Xilinx ISE webpack is free, and theres a free limited version of modelsim for it too (but still provides basic simulation stuff). The xilinx software does leave something to be desired though, as its not the most stable software (although 7 seems to give me fewer problems than 6 did). Just make sure you save often.

The easiest way to start is to just design in schematic form, but this quickly becomes more work than just using a hardware description language. I'm not too familiar with AHDL (I think its Altera's version of VHDL), as we use VHDL at school and Verilog at work. VHDL or Verilog are probably better, as they are more standard instead of specific to one company's products. I suppose if you wanted to do it on the cheap, you can just grab ISE and modelsim and start using it, and just see the simulation values you get. Eventually you will want a real device to play with though.

[Dave Flowerday]

I picked up a Pegasus board from Digilent last year that I'm really happy with. It comes with the JTAG programming cable that you need and as previously mentioned you can download the software for free.

Another good site to check out is www.fpga4fun.com. They have a couple of simple FPGA boards that they sell as well as a bunch of articles that are useful for getting started.

[Joe Ross]

At school, we used Altera UP-2 boards. Unfortunately, I think they will sell them only direct to schools.

It was nice because it had both Altera Flex FPGA and a Altera MAX CPLD, which made it much easier to experiment with the differences between the two architectures. It also came with a book that had plenty of tutorials (both with schematic capture and VHDL) and projects for the UP-2.

[fowlerm]

I would definitely go with a Xilinx FPGA or a CPLD to get started. Xilinx has a great (and free) development tool suite. Development tools for the higher-end FPGAs cost money, but the free tools should be good for just starting.