Ask HN: How to get started developing with FPGA?

Not quite the response you wanted but I just wanted to mention project Oberon (http://www.projectoberon.com) by Niklaus Wirth. In 300 some pages, starting with an FPGA, you implement a CPU, a compiler for said CPU, a language targeting the CPU and an OS which includes a GUI and a networking stack.

Programming FPGAs by Simon Monk and the Mojo v3 have been what I've been getting started with. It might be a little basic if you've been working in-depth with GPUs already, but the Mojo v3 is a great board to learn on - connects directly to your laptop via USB. It takes a lot of the magic out and makes it more like you're just programming an Arduino.

Like, 8 years ago I got a Spartan 3E board and a book on VHDL programming that didn't exactly use the exact board I had. And that seemed to work -- you'd plug in via USB. I ran some Xilinx software on an EeePC. The act of learning was more about I/O to peripherals than just implementing algorithms on an FPGA.

So that's how my experience went. I don't know whether modern resources are more or less computation-heavy.

Digilent has been making affordable FPGA Development kits using chips from multiple vendors for a long time.

I am sure you will find something suitable there.

https://store.digilentinc.com/fpga-development-boards-kits-f...

This is the board I used for two courses in college and I thought it was pretty good. I wasn't limited at all, but my designs weren't anything too complicated.

https://store.digilentinc.com/nexys-4-artix-7-fpga-trainer-b...

In my reconfigurable computing course we used the Xilinx Zybo board which has a SoC on it which includes two Arm processors and an fpga (I think the new xilinx boards also have a gpu). This was really cool but I wouldn't recommend starting with it since the dynamic reconfiguring has a big learning curve in itself.

I actually don't know what a good way to learn is since I just followed my professors notes which was helpful, but I'm sure there are sources online to help. What I can say is that fpga development isn't the same as software development. You have to think differently when implementing designs since you're literally describing the circuitry instead of designing code that runs on pre-determined hardware. I used Xilinx Vivado Webpack (it's free) throughout my fpga usage.

you can try the (~$15) upduino 2.0[0]. it's supported out of the box by the free (OSS) icestorm toolchain[1]. The upduino board itself is also OSS.

[0]: http://www.gnarlygrey.com

[1]: http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/

Since nobody mentioned it yet, I think AWS’s f1 instances starting at $1.65/hr are worth considering. The underlying board is fairly expensive, but given that you mentioned algorithmic trading, I assume you’re intending to do this professionally (in which case production will look more like the f1 instance than a small dev kit).

I recommend the pynq from digilent, it'll help ease your way into hardware design.

Can you really benefit from this new skill? Because it is very different from GPU programming. In fact, it is mostly describing hardware in some very low level language. You must develop everything by yourself to make that eGPU functionality. All cards are good, you just need to pick right one for your application. Terasic has a nice range boards starting with cheap ones for beginning to advanced ones with high end FPGAs.

I <3 TinyFPGA and also it's open source DO IT

I learn best fiddling first and theory later. Check out the DE0 Nano. Cyclone IV with ram, buttons, leds, eeprom, accelerometer, adc, header breakouts, under $100.

Any fpga dev kit in that class will work. I was able to jump right into it with the basic examples and had my own hardware uart up in a couple weeks.

The only downside is when I was using it the software was only for windows and very bloated.

I'd highly recommend starting with the TinyFpga BX and Project Icestorm:

https://tinyfpga.com/bx/guide.html

I used the lattice icestick (20 dollar board) and IceStorm (quick to install, open source toolchain) to get started a few years back and the community around the toolchain has really come a long way since (new boards and great documentation), check it out : )

I'm just starting to learn about this field as well, so thanks for posting! This video seems like it's a pretty good introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zrqYy369NQ

Another specific question that comes to my mind -- does anyone have anything to say on languages? VHDL vs Verilog? Others? Which is best for beginners?

You should start by learning VHDL or Verilog and the best environment to do that in is simulation, not FPGAs. FPGAs are hard and annoying to debug, so you'll be spending a lot of your time writing test benches that run in simulation anyway.

A nice free one for Verilog is Icarus Verilog. The FPGA vendors have toolchains that include simulation, so you could also download Xilinx or Altera's free tools and start there.

I am only half way through it, but you get a lattice icestick for less than $30 and open source tools. I've started the hackaday.io bootcamps which so far have been really good.

https://hackaday.io/list/160076-fpga-tutorials

They had a chat with the guy who wrote them a few weeks ago and there are more coming. Very accessible and you don't have to use the icestick very much -- most of it is done with free tools.

I'd actually recommend learning digital design first. Go through a course like nand2tetris. If you are writing HDL without a solid idea of what RTL logic you expect to get back you're in for a hard time.

Hi, professional FPGA developer here. A couple of things I would advise:

Firstly, development kits are great - they provide the hardware you need and all of the IP to drive that hardware. Grab a dev kit - there are lot's of other posts advising you which one. The IP that actually interacts with the real world is by far the most difficult bit.

Secondly, 99% of hardware design is simply know what actually maps to hardware. It's important to understand that hardware languages fit: FPGAs, ASICs, simulators. So what can be coherently written in VHDL/Verilog can't necessarily work if it doesn't map to the hardware platform you're writing for. So you need to actually understand the structures of an FPGA - LUTs, Registers, DSPs and Memories. Once you know what you're writing you're 90% of the way there. Real FPGA devs spend months in simulators before they get to actually hardware test. The simulator will allow you to do things that the compiler will warn you about and the hardware will simply do wrong. Each compiler (modelsim, Vivado, Quartus, VCS etc.) will have a unique interpretation of the language you're using.

Finally, in terms of tools, use whatever comes with your dev kit, but in terms of simulators Modelsim is industry standard and Intel (Altera) ships a free version.

I don't really have advise for learning material- I learnt at Uni.

The books by Pong Chu are really good. You can choose either VHDL or Verilog and then the FPGA you are getting started with. I went through 'FPGA Prototyping by Verilog Examples' as my first starting point with Verilog and it was very easy to follow. This will give you a basic level of understanding of FPGA development, from there you can study more specific topics.

There was a good article yesterday on HN that went through the process of taking the Cordic algorithm and implementing it in Verilog, it's a good example of using FPGAs to implement a specific algorithm.

http://zipcpu.com/dsp/2017/08/30/cordic.html

Alchitry has the Mojo board. They're going to release their Gold and Copper boards soon, along with expansion boards.

https://alchitry.com/collections/all

There's also the Arduino MKR Vidor board which combines an Arduino programmable processor with an FPGA.

https://store.arduino.cc/usa/arduino-vidor-4000

Not an FPGA expert by any means, but I saw that make magazine published a booklet about FPGA development for beginners. Maybe you could use it as a very short intro.

Since you mention using FPGAs for algorithmic trading I can only guess that you wish to employ FPGAs as some sort of signal processor. I would suggest investing in an FPGA driven Software Defined Radio (SDR) You'll get the best of many worlds as an SDR does something that is immediately useful, and demonstrates how the FPGA fits into the larger picture as a part of a signal processing chain. Once you understand the complete signal flow from beginning to end mastered, building the signal processor you have in mind will be far easier. You will need to brace yourself to learning at least 6 different languages, including VHDL, Verilog, C, Python, Javascript, and Go.

Altera has the cyclone iv & v chips sold by terasic. Id start with one of those boards.

Are there any fpga development workflows that use all FOSS (software) components?

Great thread with lots of good answers and perfect timing too. As an HW(board level) guy pivoting into this space just recently here is my algorithm so to speak to get into this space. Please keep in my mind that I have always "worked with " FPGAs, just "Not worked on FPGAs". 1. Purcahsed Zynqberry FPGA from Trenz. Why? For the price you get the best documented FPGA dev kit on the planet. Thye have a great Wiki with good documentation. Do your own research but this is based on my own research. If you want to develope anything with FPGAs, then your options are down to the "X" and "A" companies. Solid toolchain and documentation and communities(Both official and SO). 2. work your way through the Vivado tutorials on the Xilinx wesite. They will walk you through creating a project from scratch all the way upto creating a variety of RTL projects integrting IPs(Xilinx or your custom that you created). It includes its own flavor of simulator where you learn to simulate your designs and perform timing analysis. 3. If you don't have the necessary Digital logic background either get a decent book or enroll in the Nand2tetris(someone else suggested that).

I'm not sure how programming FPGAs compares to GPU programming, but it's a completely different way of thinking compared to traditional software.

The last time I really did FPGAs was over 10 years ago, but unless the tools have gotten orders of magnitudes better, in addition to the other concepts mentioned you need to understand clock domains, metastability, pipelining, etc.

I preferred VHDL to Verilog because you shouldn't need a lint checker for your HDL. But unless it's changed, Verilog is a lot more popular.

Training is available, for example https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html . It probably costs more than you're interested in paying, and you should have the basics covered first.