Ask HN: A book on hardware hacking

2 points by DigitalJack ↗ HN
I understand it's difficult to realize what you don't know, so this question may be unanswerable.

I'm a hardware engineer, I develop ASICs and FPGAs for various tasks. I also develop simple software as a hobby. I don't have a background in the kinds of algorithms that a CS student would have, but I can hack my way through stuff.

That said, I'm interested in working a book to take a software engineer into the realm of hardware hacking of FPGAs. Rather than just give a CPU example in VHDL I'd like to work through the main principals of what sort of thinking is needed for hardware development.

However, since I don't have a CS degree, there is a lot of intro material that I'm just not sure is common knowledge to CS students or not.

So this is an open ended question. What sorts of things would you like to see in such an introductory book (geared toward software hackers) and what would you like it to assume you already understand?

For example are CS folks comfortable with the idea of two's complement for subtraction? Are you interested in semiconductor physics or the process of constructing integrated circuits? (that's interesting background, but not strictly required for digital design). Are you comfortable with boolean logic, stuff like demorgan's laws? I'm assuming karnaugh maps aren't frequently brought up in a CS environment.

I'm trying to figure out what would be a waste if I am targeting CS hacker types vs someone with no computer background.

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