Understanding The Basics Of FPGA Programming

It may seem at first glance that electronics is challenging to learn. If you can accept the fact that it is something that you most certainly have the ability to do, then it’s just simply a matter of having some patients and then applying yourself. When it comes to FPGAs it’s the same thing. Not long ago there really wasn’t a lot of tutorials that could be found online but that has now changed. Here we will take a look at the basics of FPGA programming.

What Is Field Programmable Gate Array Also Known As FPGA?

Simply stated, it is a large array of gates that can be reconfigured and programmed most anywhere and at any time. It is, however, more complex than just a simple array of gates. Some are used for communication interfaces, memory controllers, and others are used together to create a circuit of your choice. They are manufactured by Altera, Xilinx, and others.

Understanding Why FPGAs Are More Than Just A Lot Of Gates

The problem that sometimes comes up is the fact that although it’s possible to connect a lot of gates to build logic circuits it’s not efficient or practical. For this reason, we need a good option to convert it to an array of gates. Commonly this was done by using Hardware description language or schematics. But these are often difficult to manage for larger designs which might have hundreds of thousands or even millions of gates. Anyone who has a background in electronics may, at first thought, want to rely on schematics but because of the complexity, it creates with large models it will likely be more practical to stick with HDL.

Five Benefits Of This Technology

1. Get New Technology To Market Faster

FPGAs are more flexible when dealing with new technology and often it allows the product to be brought to market faster. This is very often a major concern for modern business. It allows the long process of fabrication to be avoided and you are able to test your idea and verify it more quickly. It makes it easy to make small changes that can be used within hours rather than taking weeks. It means that some off-the-shelf hardware can be available and connected to a programmable FPGA chip. With each passing year, there are more and more tools available to decrease the learning curve which in-turn offers IP cores that can be used as advanced controllers and for signal processing.

2. Increased Performance

This technology has more computing power than the DSPs and eliminates the need for sequential execution which results in a higher per clock cycle. This technology is able to bring much more processing power for every dollar spent when compared to a DSP solution. You can produce a faster response time because you’re able to control inputs and outputs at the hardware level.

3. Increased Reliability

When a company uses a system based on a processor it will usually involve many layers of abstraction for the purpose of scheduling tasks and to share resources. This means that the driver uses OS memory and bandwidth. It also means that only one instruction can be executed at any one time. This means that one process could potentially put time critical tasks at risk and preempt them. FPGAs, however, do not use the OS.  This greatly reduces concerns about reliability and with genuine parallel execution.

4. Lower Cost

The overall cost of NRI is considerably more than solutions that utilize FPGA. The huge investment that is required for ASIC is justified because of their having to ship thousands of chips every year. Despite that, most of the end users still end up needing custom hardware for hundreds of systems they have in development. The very essence of this means that it can be programmable, and you will have no cost for fabrication or long lead times when assembling. There’s no getting around the fact that routine changes in system requirements are relatively negligible when using FPGA designs when compared to the much larger expense of changing an ASIC.

5. Long-Term Maintenance Requirements

It is easy to upgrade programmable Fpga chips in the field. An ASIC redesign, on the other hand, is time-consuming and expensive. One good example where this type of situation may occur is with digital communication protocols. They very often have some specifications that will change over time. Anyone using ASIC interfaces may experience maintenance issues as well as challenges in forwarding compatibility. FPGA chips can easily be modified eliminating this issue.  A system or product is almost certainly going to mature over time and this technology makes those changes and enhancements easier and less costly than the other options.

The reliability, flexibility and cost effectiveness of this technology all leads to the fact that it is the future. As more companies adopt the technology it will simply lead to the evolution of even higher-level tools that simply couldn’t be produced with other methods. The very fact that it is so adaptable and easy to adjust as the technology improves and changes over time makes it ideal for commercial use.

In the past, it was difficult to find much information about this technology or tutorials that help someone interested in using it to begin. But that is no longer the case. This technology is now being around long enough that more and more are embracing it and that has led to readily available tutorials that can be easily found online. Anyone who is already in the field or planning on entering the field will absolutely want to familiarize themselves with FPGA technology.

Tools Necessary To Use FPGA Technology

It will be necessary to have a good text editor and Notepad++ is a reasonable choice. Xilinx is a free ISE webpack that can be used. Mimas V2 is a development board that can be used. These are some recommendations and there are certainly other choices and there may be other tools needed. Wikipedia has some good information on this technology as well as some tutorials. Because this is the future and it is not as difficult as one might first think to use this technology, it is recommended for anyone interested in this field.