[chbot] Kickstart in FPGA course...

[Richard Jones]

What a brilliant idea. I'm very interested and can't make Wednesday evenings
or weekends. I'll ask Gail at Science Alive about the principle of using
their room, their gold coin donation has to be about the best deal around.

Richard

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 5:53 PM, hamster <hamster at snap.net.nz> 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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