[chbot] Kickstart in FPGA course...

[Mark Atherton]

Yes, interested.

You have a Xilinx bias, but don't forget about Altera and the Quartus 
II environment.

Also don't forget Verilog, which is very C like and has a shallower 
learning curve than VHDL and much simpler, but quite powerful.

Diligent have and Academic  price - AU$65.00, would you be willing to 
inquire about a bulk (5 ?) price purchase for a CHCH based non-profit 
educational group (this group).

I am sure we can scrounge space at Science Alive or the main library 
for setup...

Keep going.

Mark

At 05:53 p.m. 13/02/2011, hamster wrote:
>I haven't seen much traffic on the list, so I don't know if this is
>appropriate for the list.
>
>Is anybody interested in getting a kickstart in learning to use FPGAs?
>
>I'm toying with the idea of getting four or five people together, putting
>a bulk order for development boards, and then arranging somewhere for a
>few
>evenings to get the basics going. Given the flexibility and power I am
>amazed
>that these devices seem to be shunned as too hard too use.
>
>I found that getting started was the hard bit - knowing what board to buy,
>  getting the CAD software installed and licensed, getting the first
>project running.
>
>A FPGA board costs under AU$100 for a basic "all-in-one" 100,000 gate
>model (eg
>http://www.blackboxconsulting.com.au/product-details/basys2-100k.html),
>but
>it's the shipping that costs if you order one at a time. If $ are tight,
>you
>could go halves with a mate for a board - a lot of time is spent on your
>PC
>designing... If anybody wasn't sure if they wanted to buy a board I could
>lend them one.
>
>Larger/faster/feature-rich boards a not much more expensive, but you have
>to
>take care to ensure that your board is supported with the "free to use"
>design tools.
>
>As for the evenings, I was thinking of putting together a few brief
>show & tell  + workshops to do simple projects... an off the top of my
>head
>topic list would be
>- What FPGAs are good at
>- Getting the development software installed
>- Getting the first project running
>- Schematic entry and VHDL design
>- An overview of the on-chip resources (clock generators, block RAM etc)
>- Using a development board's resources
>- Simulation and debugging
>- Implementing FSMs
>- Interfacing to other devices
>- An overview of really advanced stuff (like calibrated sub-nanosecond
>delay lines,
>
>It would just require to
>- bring along your own laptop
>- have a basic understanding of digital logic
>- have an basic understanding of binary numbers
>- familiar with a programming language - VHDL is a bit like Cobol in it's
>verbosity
>- ready for a steep learning curve
>- A small fee towards room hire, course material (e.g. a few DVDs, a
>little printing), and enough to upgrade my board.
>- It would be nice if every board was using the same toolset - (I
>currently use Xilinx tools).
>
>Time line would be to start in 6 weeks, or maybe Easter to
>allow for organisation and delivery of the dev kits.
>
>Anybody interested, or know anybody who would be?
>
>I wonder if I could get some buy-in from a Community College?... I guess
>it is a bit more advanced than "An introduction to digital photography".
>
>Mike
>
>
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