I use the heck out of these FPGA demo boards in teaching digital electronics (primarily the Digilent Nexys2 a Xilinx Spartan 3E based FPGA). The pay back per unit time is very nice. After a brief intro to VHDL and the Xilinx ISE Webpack environment a student can take a board home and experiment on it or use it to accompany their studies. Alex at Digilent was a great resource for our school as we moved from older TTL based instruction (seriously) to modern programmable logic devices. The range of peripheral modules they offer for advanced projects is great.
Fast forward to 2019, DE10 Nano is now used as the board for the MiSTer project (Minimig amiga/Atari ST). There is a big community of programmers and FPGA devs working together. The opensource project has FPGA recreation of old gaming consoles. Many classic gaming systems - SNES/Genesis/Apple II/486/TG16/C64/Amstrad/NeoGeo/Many arcades etc.
Am I the only person who cringes with the hair on the back of my neck sticking out every time Dave un-packages & handles a board or component without an anti-static wristband on? It's like someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard... Just curious.
Yes, screen capture audio bugs, can't recall what was causing it at the time, but reaslised toward the end and fixed it. Couldn't fix the originals ones in the edit, it was the source material, sorry.
Ahh, we use these TerasiC FPGA's in our university (Vilnius Gediminas Technical university) for beginners. They're quite awesome to start with. Also a really neat thing is PSoC later versions, cause it's an MCU + FPGA, very nice thing for learning.
The de0_nano is an all time favorite of mine. It is soooo cute, and so small and very capable for many projects, which does not require me pull out the big boards.
Guys, FPGA's are mostly for hardware designers, not software designers. You have to have a complete understanding of all the logic gates and you have to understand K-maps and Boolean logic. You are basically "wiring" up logic gates via software rather than physically wiring up gates to perform a specific function. If you understand the ins and outs of digital electronics, then FPGA's will be easier for you to pick up on. For software programmers you will need to study digital design and circuits.
3:45 "I think this one is like, something crazy like eight dollars delivered or something ridiculous like that" Nowadays, there is a newer version of the USB blaster for 3 dollars delivered. How crazy is the world.
Nicely done video Dave, great boards ( I own a Basys 2 with 250k gates and a Waxwing). I would also recommend the spartan6 based Waxwing module from Numato labs - although not for beginners. Also a DSP demo board review would be nice.
Dave disabled the "Talkback" feature in Altera Quartus during installation. This may be the intuitive thing to do, but you actually want to enable talkback! In return for enabling talkback, altera gives you the "Signal tap" tool for free. And you absolutely, positively, NEED the signal tap tool. "Signal tap" is what allows you to debug the design in hardware. And secondly, the ECAD package to create the schematics for the evaluation board is Cadence.
I have a Basys2 board at home. It a great little board with only 1 drawback. The voltage supply is not stable, therefore the oscillator is not stable and your VGA output will be bad. Fortunately it comes with a option for a external oscillator so it's an easy fix.
I recently got an DE0 Nano that is still going strong. Although I wish I would have gotten something with more onboard modules so I didn't have to breadboard everything
For the DE-series boards, don't use the version of Quartus II included on the disc - there is a much newer and less buggy version freely available on Altera's website.
Dave, thanks so much for these videos. I've been watching your vids for years now. Thank you for your time and effort. I recently graduated with a BS and my curriculum didn't cover FPGA, so I've been wondering how to learn them without spending thousands of dollars. Lots of jobs I've found in my area want microcontroller + FPGA experience. I wasn't aware of these less-expensive options and am very excited to try one of them out. For the job market, do you think it is worthwhile to learn Spartan3? Do I need to spend more and learn the MicroZed to be marketable? Furthermore, would learning on the papilio or DE0 Nano boostrap me for using higher-end FPGAs? I should mention that I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone and learn embedded linux as well. Thanks again. -Dave (yes, it's a good name!)
Apples vs Oranges. C vs Pascal. Not much to say really. VHDL was designed by the US military. And it kind of shows... Interestingly, VHDL seems to have the bigger market share in Europe, while in US and Japan Verilog seems to have the bigger share. But both languages are used everywhere. In the end, you will use the language used by your customer, or your employer.
The older versions of Altera Quartus doesn't like Windows 7 or 8. The drivers usually doesn't install. Downloading and Installing the newer versions of Quartus doesn't have the problem. I believe 11 was the version they fixed everything.
They are just way behind the times... pathetic if you ask me. That's another reason why I've pretty much stopped learning about the stuff. Plus a lot of the people lie & say it's compatible with Win8, but it's not. It really pisses me off!
Dave, why would you say beginners don't need Modelsim? As a beginner it is very important to be able and simulate your code, probably more important than actually compiling and downloading it to the FPGA. The simulator that is built in Quartus is not nearly as good as Modelsim.
Probably because if beginners have to use modelsim with no supervision they will never become embedded programmers because they will end up smashing their computers to little pieces and switching their major to interpretive dance.
Thanks for this video Dave! I'm still interested in more information on FPGA's especially for beginners but i get from your video that it's pretty hard and takes a lot of time. Any suggestions on where to start and where to find good information about FPGA's?
I remember my first attempt at a blinky on a cheap Chinese FPGA board. I was expecting the tool to configure unused pins as hi - but it connected them to a supply rail! This meant I had shorts on the board and the bugger got proper hot potato. FPGAs still bite me if I take my eye off the buggers.
You need to install Quartus II as administrator, that is the reason for the permission errors. FPGAs are not for the faint of heart - you need to have excellent PC and software skills as well as a reasonable amount of electronics knowledge. I do think that it is very important to learn FPGAs as the majority of todays technology is based on them either in part, or altogether.
great video, love your down to earth style. An aussie, I guess? I've done a very simple sound synthesis (karplus-strong) algorithm on 8-bit arduino uno. To improve the sound quality, the most important feature would be a 12 or 16 bit DA convertor. Looking around a bit, it doesn't seem to be a high priority for uc chips. Any suggestion for uc or fpga that is good for sound, ie all built in cos I don't much like etching pcbs? This is just hobby stuff.
As a hobbyist, your best bet is to use a discrete DAC chip. This is what it is assumed you will do should the need arise and why most µCs don't have precision DACs. After all, a µC is a *controller*. Its entire reason for existence is to control things like DACs. That many of them have low-precision DACs on-board is simply a matter of convenience - usually for driving things using feedback, not for generating precision analog signals. You want something like an AD1955. You feed it PCM via serial bus, and it gives you line-level analog signal. Bob's your uncle. You will find it much simpler to stick to Arduino and add a couple wires than learning to FPGA. IMO.
Hi There. Thanks for the video. I'm currently deciding if I should get the Nexys 4 or the Zybo Zynq 7000. In the university classes they use the nexys 4. Which of them should I get in your opinion? Thanks!
Depends on what you want to use it for. If it's just for playing around, I'd go with the Nexys 4 as the FPGA on that is much bigger (3-4 times if memory serves) than the one in that Zynq. Also a ton of peripherals. On the other hand, if you also want to use it for something practical (e.g. cipher/hash cracking, virtual currency mining…), I'd probably go with the Zybo because it will be much easier to feed data into the FPGA and process the results; there just aren't any fast interfaces on the Nexys 4 (although the FPGA itself does support PCI express, but AFAIK it's not accessible on the board).
An Arduino is a starter kit for an Atmel microcontroller; they're similar in that they're starter sets for a particular chip but an FPGA is significantly different than a microcontroller. Dave did an earlier video explaining what FPGAs are so go check it out.
Yes, screen capture audio bugs, can't recall what was causing it at the time, but reaslised toward the end and fixed it. Couldn't fix the originals ones in the edit, it was the source material, sorry.
It's sad to see such a vicious industry, riddled with proprietary stuff, multi gigabit bloated software, unintuitive interfaces, overly expensive dev tools, which become obsolete as soon as they get out the fab, Im tempted to compare it with the software industry, back in the 90 they both where pretty similar, but look at it today, there are little to none proprietary tools, linux is mainstream, the SW community is free from corporations and able to drive innovation with little investment, that's why SW startups survive and make a profit, I dare anyone to give me an example of a modern HW startup that came out of a garage.
Unfortunately FPGA's are so massively complex and almost infinitely configurable devices, there is no other choice than to have all these massive bloated tools. That's the downside of FPGA flexibility.
this is what i think: unlike the processors and microcontrolers the fpga will have some use for longer time. because with enough gates, it's possible to make anything. we can program 10 uart, or a new ddr3 memory controler, or a mouse. but not for the microcontrolers. after few years we need to change the microcontroler if we want to get the last usb connection or even if we change the project to another that need a fast communication or a new display. what make the old fpga obsolete is the number of gates and the what the software can program.
FPGAs are very complex. Any idiot can write software, but only a few people have the brains to use an FPGA. They are a professional product, the demand for open source tools simply isn't high enough to justify the development cost of something so incredibly complex.
I'm kinda confused and disappointed with FPGA CAD. I expected it to be something like visual programming IDE or even Visio diagram software providing very friendly environment for designers where they can just draw the logic of device with common logic blocks like NOR, NAND, triggers etc. And then just press 'generate' button to convert this logical structure into FPGA native microcode.
You can do that, it's just that professionals hardly even do that any more. It's the equivalent of writing software with assembly code; it's helpful to be able to use (especially read) it, but the "compiler" usually does a better job anyway. Plus, some constructs are possible in HDLs that are not easy to replicate in circuit diagrams.
Not watched the whole video yet.. but I'm guessing you don't discuss any boards other than the ones introduced at the start... For people just starting with FPGAs that just want to compile some VHDL or Verilog and see some LEDs blinking get a cheap $30 board and JTAG pod from ebay. Get a better Digilent or whatever board when you need stuff that is never quite right on Chinese boards like HDMI in/out etc. The basic boards from the brand names will be 2 or 3 times the price of one from waveshare or whatever and you'll usually get a much smaller FPGA.
Pretty sure all the cheaper eBay ones are CPLDs and not FPGAs. Perhaps in the 30-60$ range you'll have a couple of really low-end FPGAs, though an original FPGA demo board is worth it a lot
$30 gets you a Spartan 3 250k, platform flash, an oscillator and some LEDs. The Basys 2 from Digilent costs $90 and you get a 100k Spartan 3 + crappy resistor divider vga + the stuff on the $30 chinese board. If you want video output you probably want something a bit better than the crappy VGA on entry level boards... Once you get serious about it you would put down the cash to get something like the Nexys 4. If I was talking about CPLDs we'd be talking about
donpalmera though you are right that there are Spartan3 dev boards on eBay for like 30-50$, they are rather barebones compared to the average dev board. I don't really agree that soldering an QFP yourself is good training, though I do agree that CPLDs make for good introduction devices if you just want to program some basic NAND/XOR/NOT/whatever gates and make leds blink. There's a lot of cheap possibilities these days! Kids and amateurs playing with FPGAs, unheard of until a couple of years ago!
+InTheNameOfJustice What? These boards are extremely reasonably priced. And the software, as he said, is reasonably priced for businesses that are serious and need the extras that the licenses provide.
Hi Dave. We 've recently started a new project in my company based on Cyclone 5 SoC (the Zinq competitore). It also as 2 A9 arm hard core and a large fpga fabric connected. Do you know the if there are some differences between the XilinX and Altera SoC hard processor? We choose the Altera one only beacase in our company there are a lot of code written in AHDL! AHH Awful!
AFAIK Altera and Xilinx use the same ARM cores. But the Altera SoC is more flexible in terms of pin-shraing, boot config, etc. Xilinx basically builds a CPU with added FPGA fabric; the system is CPU centric.
Actually, you still have the configuration. It's not as easy as a stand alone cpu. Also, I think it's a question of what you're used to. I find it much easier to use a CPLD to bring up a whole board with power sequencing, resets and what not, than using a CPU or uC. I admit I'm biased, but I often feel it is easier and quicker to change the programmable logic than to change software...
sid6p8 yes for the Zynq there is still configuration but only for programmable logic and only when you need it, the ARM and everything it needs runs out of the box, plug it in and everything is running like it was a standalone CPU, then load a configuration and you have programmable logic with tight integration and high bandwidth buses shared with that CPU
depends on what you want to do. if you get one of the fpga boards you will probably be able to configure it to be an arduino board as well, if you want, but that may have issues and you don't want to deal with them as a beginner. I'd suggest you get an arduino, get comfortable with the whole idea and then get an fpga.
They are not the same thing! FPGA's are not replacements for microcontroller. FPGA's enable a different set of capabilities not easily possible with microcontrollers. If you have to ask this questions then your answer is the Arduino!
***** if we were not addressing a beginner i would NOT correct you, but because he is a beginner i think we should say 'microcontroller', not 'cpu'. Please don't take me the wrong way. I am just trying to avoid confusing him. It's not something terribly important, but you know, every bit helps.
***** you know it, that it doesn't matter how many peripherals you stick to it... if it has its own ram and you can't add your own ram to it... it's not a cpu. You know the funniest thing though? The microcontroller 'arduino' is not considered to be the chip itself... it is the whole pcb that is considered 'a microcontroller'. I don't agree with that, i find it unintuitive, but that's how they chose to classify it :|
Another very cheap alternative is the guzunty pi. It's a cpld but it works very similar (only much less programming space), but it's way cheaper: github.com/Guzunty/Pi/wiki
PT-BR: Oi Dave! O que é isso em cima da sua mesa? É E V A ? Aqui no Brasil dizemos: E V A! Nos vídeos depois deste, parece que você trocou a cor! Obrigado! Gosto muito de seus vídeos! Translated by Google translate: Hi Dave! What's that on top of your desk? Is E V A? Here in Brazil we say: E V A! In the videos after this, it seems you changed color! Thank you! I love your videos!
Greetings Dave. Im watching this topic (about to view previous videos with interest). I just got one of these Logi-Pi boards. valentfx.com/logi-pi/ - Spartan6 on a shield for a Raspberry-Pi (also available for the BeagleBone). It supposed to make using a FPGA a lot easier by handling all the support functions you mention, as well as giving you a network interface, shell and gui and tools via the Pi, as well as being Arduino shield compatible and all sorts of useful sounding tools. I would be interested to see what you think of the idea. It seems a good way to get a leg up into FPGAs without having to buy more expensive development boards (assuming you have/want a Raspberry Pi already). I hope what you are going to cover is applicable :)
I had to use the Quartus II thing at college. It was an awful experience. Super complex, really bad editor (complete-fail auto-complete, 3 color syntax highlight, annoying format helper).
Yes and no. For the basic stuff, like configuring your FPGA, yes, you can use pretty much any JTAG interface. If you want to use the more advanced features for debugging or security features then no. You'll need the vendors JTAG thingis. But, if you're using Altera, you can buy the treasic USB Blaster which works just as well as the Altera one, for a much better price. Also, Altera is willing to give out the code needed to design your own USB Blaster on board using a USB ic and a small CPLD - talk to your FAE.
Aside from CPLDs being old (that is small, slow and just overall obsolete), the main difference is that they use actual logic gates to implement logic functions, whereas FPGAs use LUTs. With LUTs (lookup tables) you define an output for every combination of inputs (i.e. fully customizeable logic function in a single block) which is much more powerful than connecting gates together. The only advantage of using actual gates is that the signal itself is transferred-albeit greatly attenuated-so you can do some basic analog processing.
hellterminator you really got something mixed up right here. They are much faster than fpga's for most tasks and are just as new or old as fpga's. They just have less logic elements but that is the only real difference(except how they work then)
hi Dave check this article on xilinx website, they talk about this video, with some notes forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xcell-Daily-Blog/EEVblog-reviews-affordable-FPGA-Dev-Kits-including-Zynq-based/ba-p/484418#feedback-success
I want to support Dave and all that, but why would anyone want to buy the Dave Jones board? Huge CPU power, but absolutely no usable I/O? Surprised he allowed his name to be used with that. I would disagree about not downloading the dev software, even if it is several GB. Bundled software is notoriously out of date! I have a NIOS II Eval Kit, foolishly installed the software and then ran online updates - it comprehensively broke itself. Uninstalling and downloading the dev software from the manufacturer's site worked smoothly. Be aware that the free software can have constraints. For example, the NIOS II (and any other Altera Open Core software) will only run while tethered to your PC via JTAG.
I've only been learning computers and surfing the Net for 2 years. I was one of those old fogies that refused to get with the times until I became disabled. I bore easily and get tired of video games real fast, so I started learning electronics. I noticed right away how difficult it is to sometimes miss sarcasm and jokes. Also it is hard to express yourself totally without writing a short-story on every comment. So with things like that, I always assume that it is meant as sarcasm or a joke at first until I know for sure that it isn't. That's also why I don't like to communicate with text messages: it's just too easy to misunderstand each other.
You do peeve me off with your negativity. For. Instance one comment you made irt the circuit diagram for one of the boards in review was about the schematics, beautifully drawn but you say "... across a few pages which is particulalry annoying..." yet if the pages we not so neatly laid out and all on one page you would propbably have made another comment about it being all cramped up. Sometimes you are very difficult please for simple reasons....
Graham Gillett eevblog is described as an "off the cuff" vlog so thats kinda the point... we get to see his entire thought process and I think that means we get more valuable information. I think that was a reasonable comment about the circuit diagram spread out over multiple pages, one page had what 6 or 7 objects on it? (not going to seek through the video to check again, just estimating that number from memory)
688kb for just a fucking gsensor? HOW MUCH CODE IS THIS? fpga are really pain in the ass.. ok its fast but its stupidly complicated for just blinkin led's or g-sensor readout a cheap µC will do the job
I think the point is if you can do the job with a cheap µC, you should. If you need the performance that an FPGA will deliver for an application specific task (which is not going to be a simple task), then that's when you're going to use an FPGA. I'm pretty sure Dave's not going to do a tutorial based on some critical complicated, timing-sensitive function.
The file is that big because it contains all the config fuse bits. Unlike a micro, this isn't just a "code", it is the entire config for whole chip. Imagine a micro that you had to download the info to *define* the entire processor each time, that's basically how an FPGA works.
![Yeat & Quavo - 5BRAZY [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4XxnTAwyxus/mqdefault.jpg)
Please, please, please continue making FPGA videos Dave
I've been working with Quartus for almost 2 years now. Your video taught me some nifty things I did not know about. Thanks Dave!!
I use the heck out of these FPGA demo boards in teaching digital electronics (primarily the Digilent Nexys2 a Xilinx Spartan 3E based FPGA). The pay back per unit time is very nice. After a brief intro to VHDL and the Xilinx ISE Webpack environment a student can take a board home and experiment on it or use it to accompany their studies. Alex at Digilent was a great resource for our school as we moved from older TTL based instruction (seriously) to modern programmable logic devices. The range of peripheral modules they offer for advanced projects is great.
Fast forward to 2019, DE10 Nano is now used as the board for the MiSTer project (Minimig amiga/Atari ST). There is a big community of programmers and FPGA devs working together. The opensource project has FPGA recreation of old gaming consoles. Many classic gaming systems - SNES/Genesis/Apple II/486/TG16/C64/Amstrad/NeoGeo/Many arcades etc.
Thank you very much Dave! You seems to know what i want from a good elettronic video channel! From Italy :)
"That is a real bobby dazzler" haha I always get a kick out of the terms you Aussies use...
I wanted to go cheap...
But then hey! Here's a Dave Jones edition Demo Board!
And I was like, Whooo!!!
Now I got to get one of them!
Damn it, Dave! :)
17:10 got some audio weirdness ... was it just me ?
Nope.
Yeah I was getting it too.
Probably just his computer lagging a bit with all the things he's doing on it at once
Ignyte me too
Am I the only person who cringes with the hair on the back of my neck sticking out every time Dave un-packages & handles a board or component without an anti-static wristband on? It's like someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard...
Just curious.
Yes, screen capture audio bugs, can't recall what was causing it at the time, but reaslised toward the end and fixed it. Couldn't fix the originals ones in the edit, it was the source material, sorry.
Great one, Dave! I would love to see more FPGA videos on your channel
Ahh, we use these TerasiC FPGA's in our university (Vilnius Gediminas Technical university) for beginners. They're quite awesome to start with. Also a really neat thing is PSoC later versions, cause it's an MCU + FPGA, very nice thing for learning.
Nice video thanks for share. I have the DE0-Nano development board and it's very practical FPGA.
The de0_nano is an all time favorite of mine. It is soooo cute, and so small and very capable for many projects, which does not require me pull out the big boards.
Guys, FPGA's are mostly for hardware designers, not software designers. You have to have a complete understanding of all the logic gates and you have to understand K-maps and Boolean logic. You are basically "wiring" up logic gates via software rather than physically wiring up gates to perform a specific function. If you understand the ins and outs of digital electronics, then FPGA's will be easier for you to pick up on. For software programmers you will need to study digital design and circuits.
3:45 "I think this one is like, something crazy like eight dollars delivered or something ridiculous like that" Nowadays, there is a newer version of the USB blaster for 3 dollars delivered. How crazy is the world.
Nicely done video Dave, great boards ( I own a Basys 2 with 250k gates and a Waxwing). I would also recommend the spartan6 based Waxwing module from Numato labs - although not for beginners. Also a DSP demo board review would be nice.
how much did that 250k gate fpga cost you? and have u fully utilized it yet and with what?
De0-CV so cheap now :D $99 academic price :D 49k LE and 3Mbits of embedded memory with Cyclone V... so good
Dave disabled the "Talkback" feature in Altera Quartus during installation. This may be the intuitive thing to do, but you actually want to enable talkback!
In return for enabling talkback, altera gives you the "Signal tap" tool for free. And you absolutely, positively, NEED the signal tap tool.
"Signal tap" is what allows you to debug the design in hardware.
And secondly, the ECAD package to create the schematics for the evaluation board is Cadence.
just came here to hear you say BEAUTY, i love that accent
please make more videos on FPGA!!!!
I was actually thinking about getting a papillo 1 so im glad im watching!
A free softcore you should look into is OpenSPARC, originally open-sourced by Sun Microsystems, based on the UltraSPARC T1 and T2.
I have a Basys2 board at home. It a great little board with only 1 drawback. The voltage supply is not stable, therefore the oscillator is not stable and your VGA output will be bad. Fortunately it comes with a option for a external oscillator so it's an easy fix.
Audio problems...
: (
Hi Dave, this video reviewing FPGA starter kits is approaching 4 years old. Are they still the shiz? Maybe you could have an intern make an addendum?
I recently got an DE0 Nano that is still going strong. Although I wish I would have gotten something with more onboard modules so I didn't have to breadboard everything
I recently got DE2-115 that is going to be fun to figure out. It's got a ton of stuff
For the DE-series boards, don't use the version of Quartus II included on the disc - there is a much newer and less buggy version freely available on Altera's website.
Dave, thanks so much for these videos. I've been watching your vids for years now. Thank you for your time and effort. I recently graduated with a BS and my curriculum didn't cover FPGA, so I've been wondering how to learn them without spending thousands of dollars. Lots of jobs I've found in my area want microcontroller + FPGA experience. I wasn't aware of these less-expensive options and am very excited to try one of them out. For the job market, do you think it is worthwhile to learn Spartan3? Do I need to spend more and learn the MicroZed to be marketable? Furthermore, would learning on the papilio or DE0 Nano boostrap me for using higher-end FPGAs? I should mention that I'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone and learn embedded linux as well. Thanks again. -Dave (yes, it's a good name!)
Whats interesting is that 7 years later the price of some of these boards has increased by 300% in 2021.
Oh look, Basys2, actually made a few projects on that.
Dave -
Can you talk a bit about the differences between VHDL and Verilog and which one a beginner to FPGAs should tackle first?
Apples vs Oranges. C vs Pascal. Not much to say really.
VHDL was designed by the US military. And it kind of shows...
Interestingly, VHDL seems to have the bigger market share in Europe, while in US and Japan Verilog seems to have the bigger share.
But both languages are used everywhere.
In the end, you will use the language used by your customer, or your employer.
The older versions of Altera Quartus doesn't like Windows 7 or 8. The drivers usually doesn't install. Downloading and Installing the newer versions of Quartus doesn't have the problem. I believe 11 was the version they fixed everything.
They are just way behind the times... pathetic if you ask me.
That's another reason why I've pretty much stopped learning about the stuff. Plus a lot of the people lie & say it's compatible with Win8, but it's not. It really pisses me off!
The schematic capture package that the Terasic board is using looks like Orcad In my opinion it is the best schematic and layout package around
Dave, why would you say beginners don't need Modelsim? As a beginner it is very important to be able and simulate your code, probably more important than actually compiling and downloading it to the FPGA. The simulator that is built in Quartus is not nearly as good as Modelsim.
simulation is important but I think Xilinxs simulator will work for most things, never tried Quartus
Beginners already have enough to deal with in the tools, than adding Modelsim into the equation. But I don't really disagree with your point.
Probably because if beginners have to use modelsim with no supervision they will never become embedded programmers because they will end up smashing their computers to little pieces and switching their major to interpretive dance.
"Bugger off Avast" Hahaha, before you said that I thought it was mine and went to close it.
Thanks for this video Dave! I'm still interested in more information on FPGA's especially for beginners but i get from your video that it's pretty hard and takes a lot of time. Any suggestions on where to start and where to find good information about FPGA's?
Just got a DE0 Nano ! Can't wait to start breadboarding then mess around with a gameboy advance
I remember my first attempt at a blinky on a cheap Chinese FPGA board. I was expecting the tool to configure unused pins as hi - but it connected them to a supply rail! This meant I had shorts on the board and the bugger got proper hot potato.
FPGAs still bite me if I take my eye off the buggers.
Should have read hi-z but just got hi. Damned auto corrupt
Keep going Dave!
Great Job, keep on this interesting topic please.
Is it just me, or does the video start crackling up around 16:10 and onward?
I thought it was me as well; thanks for the comment that saved me from trying to look for the bug in my system.
yes it happened for everyone. his pc started to struggle once the quartus software was open. that caused this crackling
You need to install Quartus II as administrator, that is the reason for the permission errors. FPGAs are not for the faint of heart - you need to have excellent PC and software skills as well as a reasonable amount of electronics knowledge. I do think that it is very important to learn FPGAs as the majority of todays technology is based on them either in part, or altogether.
Woow finally. You promised this video a while ago!
too busy counting his money.. 20, 40, 60,,,
Good one, Dave. I have been harping about FPGA videos for a while. Can we get into some super simple synthesis stuff? Show us a counter or something?
The power of FPGA = Hardware Acceleration & Doing things in parallel real time.
check out the open source Xula boards from Xess. He's got some good beginner stuff there as well, i had it blinking!
cool, i got Zedboard, Dave, you must try this board, it's like Microzed, but wiht more performance in ARM processor, and PL ( programmable logic )
Have you tried the Lattice Dev boards? They are around £20 which is a far more approachable price, but do you lose out on something for that?
hi Dave,
why you don't make a demo for Microzed ?
thank you
Lattice also makes some great products. Very cheap and great free dev tools.
great video, love your down to earth style. An aussie, I guess? I've done a very simple sound synthesis (karplus-strong) algorithm on 8-bit arduino uno. To improve the sound quality, the most important feature would be a 12 or 16 bit DA convertor. Looking around a bit, it doesn't seem to be a high priority for uc chips. Any suggestion for uc or fpga that is good for sound, ie all built in cos I don't much like etching pcbs? This is just hobby stuff.
As a hobbyist, your best bet is to use a discrete DAC chip. This is what it is assumed you will do should the need arise and why most µCs don't have precision DACs. After all, a µC is a *controller*. Its entire reason for existence is to control things like DACs. That many of them have low-precision DACs on-board is simply a matter of convenience - usually for driving things using feedback, not for generating precision analog signals.
You want something like an AD1955. You feed it PCM via serial bus, and it gives you line-level analog signal. Bob's your uncle. You will find it much simpler to stick to Arduino and add a couple wires than learning to FPGA. IMO.
Hi There. Thanks for the video.
I'm currently deciding if I should get the Nexys 4 or the Zybo Zynq 7000. In the university classes they use the nexys 4.
Which of them should I get in your opinion?
Thanks!
Depends on what you want to use it for. If it's just for playing around, I'd go with the Nexys 4 as the FPGA on that is much bigger (3-4 times if memory serves) than the one in that Zynq. Also a ton of peripherals. On the other hand, if you also want to use it for something practical (e.g. cipher/hash cracking, virtual currency mining…), I'd probably go with the Zybo because it will be much easier to feed data into the FPGA and process the results; there just aren't any fast interfaces on the Nexys 4 (although the FPGA itself does support PCI express, but AFAIK it's not accessible on the board).
What is your wallpaper at 10:37 dave? It looks beautiful
It's a photo I took of the Apple Newton processor.
EEVblog Would you mind sharing it? It looks like a wonderful wallpaper.
no
Audio bugs? Anyway, an ardinuo is a the same concept as these right?
An Arduino is a starter kit for an Atmel microcontroller; they're similar in that they're starter sets for a particular chip but an FPGA is significantly different than a microcontroller. Dave did an earlier video explaining what FPGAs are so go check it out.
Yes, screen capture audio bugs, can't recall what was causing it at the time, but reaslised toward the end and fixed it. Couldn't fix the originals ones in the edit, it was the source material, sorry.
EEVblog I thought my onboard motherboard audio was giving up, I feel relieved now :)
FPGA's are completely different to microcontrollers. See my previous video on what FPGA"s are.
EEVblog Yeah, that video didnt show up in my subscriptions until after this video. Thanks!
It's sad to see such a vicious industry, riddled with proprietary stuff, multi gigabit bloated software, unintuitive interfaces, overly expensive dev tools, which become obsolete as soon as they get out the fab, Im tempted to compare it with the software industry, back in the 90 they both where pretty similar, but look at it today, there are little to none proprietary tools, linux is mainstream, the SW community is free from corporations and able to drive innovation with little investment, that's why SW startups survive and make a profit, I dare anyone to give me an example of a modern HW startup that came out of a garage.
Unfortunately FPGA's are so massively complex and almost infinitely configurable devices, there is no other choice than to have all these massive bloated tools. That's the downside of FPGA flexibility.
this is what i think:
unlike the processors and microcontrolers the fpga will have some use for longer time. because with enough gates, it's possible to make anything.
we can program 10 uart, or a new ddr3 memory controler, or a mouse.
but not for the microcontrolers. after few years we need to change the microcontroler if we want to get the last usb connection or even if we change the project to another that need a fast communication or a new display.
what make the old fpga obsolete is the number of gates and the what the software can program.
FPGAs are very complex. Any idiot can write software, but only a few people have the brains to use an FPGA. They are a professional product, the demand for open source tools simply isn't high enough to justify the development cost of something so incredibly complex.
Audio is tearing a bit at 24 mins, may be encoding errors.
My University uses the DE0-Nano's in the lab 👍
Great Video!
I'm kinda confused and disappointed with FPGA CAD. I expected it to be something like visual programming IDE or even Visio diagram software providing very friendly environment for designers where they can just draw the logic of device with common logic blocks like NOR, NAND, triggers etc. And then just press 'generate' button to convert this logical structure into FPGA native microcode.
You can do that, it's just that professionals hardly even do that any more. It's the equivalent of writing software with assembly code; it's helpful to be able to use (especially read) it, but the "compiler" usually does a better job anyway.
Plus, some constructs are possible in HDLs that are not easy to replicate in circuit diagrams.
That is a double-density DVD, I think that is bigger than the Windows 7 install disk. 0_o
Hey, where's you anti-static wrist strap ?
Not watched the whole video yet.. but I'm guessing you don't discuss any boards other than the ones introduced at the start... For people just starting with FPGAs that just want to compile some VHDL or Verilog and see some LEDs blinking get a cheap $30 board and JTAG pod from ebay. Get a better Digilent or whatever board when you need stuff that is never quite right on Chinese boards like HDMI in/out etc. The basic boards from the brand names will be 2 or 3 times the price of one from waveshare or whatever and you'll usually get a much smaller FPGA.
This video only deals with the DE0 Nano.
Pretty sure all the cheaper eBay ones are CPLDs and not FPGAs. Perhaps in the 30-60$ range you'll have a couple of really low-end FPGAs, though an original FPGA demo board is worth it a lot
$30 gets you a Spartan 3 250k, platform flash, an oscillator and some LEDs. The Basys 2 from Digilent costs $90 and you get a 100k Spartan 3 + crappy resistor divider vga + the stuff on the $30 chinese board. If you want video output you probably want something a bit better than the crappy VGA on entry level boards... Once you get serious about it you would put down the cash to get something like the Nexys 4. If I was talking about CPLDs we'd be talking about
donpalmera though you are right that there are Spartan3 dev boards on eBay for like 30-50$, they are rather barebones compared to the average dev board. I don't really agree that soldering an QFP yourself is good training, though I do agree that CPLDs make for good introduction devices if you just want to program some basic NAND/XOR/NOT/whatever gates and make leds blink. There's a lot of cheap possibilities these days! Kids and amateurs playing with FPGAs, unheard of until a couple of years ago!
0:53 IDK Dave i would be careful, this black graphic suggest it have anomalous properties.
Reasonably priced? You have GOT to be kidding.
+InTheNameOfJustice What? These boards are extremely reasonably priced. And the software, as he said, is reasonably priced for businesses that are serious and need the extras that the licenses provide.
I see fan pins and heatsink holes on the high-end one. Does that mean that it needs cooling?
in many cases no, but if you run both arm cores and all the logic at full tilt you might need it
We did manage to overheat a Zedboard once while experimenting with software defined radio, other than that, we never had a problem.
Hi Dave. We 've recently started a new project in my company based on Cyclone 5 SoC (the Zinq competitore). It also as 2 A9 arm hard core and a large fpga fabric connected. Do you know the if there are some differences between the XilinX and Altera SoC hard processor? We choose the Altera one only beacase in our company there are a lot of code written in AHDL! AHH Awful!
I'm working on the Zynq, but looking a the marketing burb of the Cyclone 5 SoC it looks like they are pretty much identical
AFAIK Altera and Xilinx use the same ARM cores. But the Altera SoC is more flexible in terms of pin-shraing, boot config, etc. Xilinx basically builds a CPU with added FPGA fabric; the system is CPU centric.
a system that is cpu centric and runs with out a configuration is a huge advantage compared to the previous attempts at cpu+fpga
Actually, you still have the configuration. It's not as easy as a stand alone cpu.
Also, I think it's a question of what you're used to. I find it much easier to use a CPLD to bring up a whole board with power sequencing, resets and what not, than using a CPU or uC. I admit I'm biased, but I often feel it is easier and quicker to change the programmable logic than to change software...
sid6p8
yes for the Zynq there is still configuration but only for programmable logic and only when you need it, the ARM and everything it needs runs out of the box, plug it in and everything is running like it was a standalone CPU, then load a configuration and you have programmable logic with tight integration and high bandwidth buses shared with that CPU
Dave, Bob IS my uncle.
What should i buy as an beginner , an arduino or one of the boards you mentioned , because both have advantages and disadvantages?
I started with Arduino.
depends on what you want to do. if you get one of the fpga boards you will probably be able to configure it to be an arduino board as well, if you want, but that may have issues and you don't want to deal with them as a beginner. I'd suggest you get an arduino, get comfortable with the whole idea and then get an fpga.
They are not the same thing! FPGA's are not replacements for microcontroller. FPGA's enable a different set of capabilities not easily possible with microcontrollers. If you have to ask this questions then your answer is the Arduino!
***** if we were not addressing a beginner i would NOT correct you, but because he is a beginner i think we should say 'microcontroller', not 'cpu'. Please don't take me the wrong way. I am just trying to avoid confusing him. It's not something terribly important, but you know, every bit helps.
***** you know it, that it doesn't matter how many peripherals you stick to it... if it has its own ram and you can't add your own ram to it... it's not a cpu. You know the funniest thing though? The microcontroller 'arduino' is not considered to be the chip itself... it is the whole pcb that is considered 'a microcontroller'. I don't agree with that, i find it unintuitive, but that's how they chose to classify it :|
Another very cheap alternative is the guzunty pi. It's a cpld but it works very similar (only much less programming space), but it's way cheaper:
github.com/Guzunty/Pi/wiki
PT-BR:
Oi Dave! O que é isso em cima da sua mesa? É E V A ? Aqui no Brasil dizemos: E V A! Nos vídeos depois deste, parece que você trocou a cor! Obrigado! Gosto muito de seus vídeos!
Translated by Google translate:
Hi Dave! What's that on top of your desk? Is E V A? Here in Brazil we say: E V A! In the videos after this, it seems you changed color! Thank you! I love your videos!
Could I use Cypress PSoC 4 instead of a FPGA
update please
Yes, audio problems for me as well.
its good to start with CPLD`s then FPGA`s that's what I was told.
12:10 - Run as Administrator ;-)
Windows standard speed of a dead sloth rats me off.
Thanks!
Greetings Dave. Im watching this topic (about to view previous videos with interest). I just got one of these Logi-Pi boards. valentfx.com/logi-pi/ - Spartan6 on a shield for a Raspberry-Pi (also available for the BeagleBone). It supposed to make using a FPGA a lot easier by handling all the support functions you mention, as well as giving you a network interface, shell and gui and tools via the Pi, as well as being Arduino shield compatible and all sorts of useful sounding tools. I would be interested to see what you think of the idea. It seems a good way to get a leg up into FPGAs without having to buy more expensive development boards (assuming you have/want a Raspberry Pi already). I hope what you are going to cover is applicable :)
Hey, I have that Basys2 board :)
I had to use the Quartus II thing at college. It was an awful experience. Super complex, really bad editor (complete-fail auto-complete, 3 color syntax highlight, annoying format helper).
is it possible to use a generic usb-to-jtag device?
Yes and no. For the basic stuff, like configuring your FPGA, yes, you can use pretty much any JTAG interface.
If you want to use the more advanced features for debugging or security features then no. You'll need the vendors JTAG thingis.
But, if you're using Altera, you can buy the treasic USB Blaster which works just as well as the Altera one, for a much better price.
Also, Altera is willing to give out the code needed to design your own USB Blaster on board using a USB ic and a small CPLD - talk to your FAE.
that sounds reasonable. I have a TI usb2jtag from the msp430 dsk
What's the difference between an fpga and cpld?
Aside from CPLDs being old (that is small, slow and just overall obsolete), the main difference is that they use actual logic gates to implement logic functions, whereas FPGAs use LUTs. With LUTs (lookup tables) you define an output for every combination of inputs (i.e. fully customizeable logic function in a single block) which is much more powerful than connecting gates together. The only advantage of using actual gates is that the signal itself is transferred-albeit greatly attenuated-so you can do some basic analog processing.
hellterminator you really got something mixed up right here. They are much faster than fpga's for most tasks and are just as new or old as fpga's. They just have less logic elements but that is the only real difference(except how they work then)
Dave Jones Ed.. wasnt he a singer?
its not unusual, happens all the time!
Can I program a dos VOICE procesador alesis
???????
OMG BEST Day of My life !
sucks to be you.
Fuck Google Plus, Retro Power! It was supposed to be a joke, pathetic trash :)
bwAHAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH HA AHA AHAHAH YOU SO FUNNAY!
o_o
Hey you need to redo this video
Is it HI or High ??!!..... 8 yrs after
hi Dave
check this article on xilinx website, they talk about this video, with some notes
forums.xilinx.com/t5/Xcell-Daily-Blog/EEVblog-reviews-affordable-FPGA-Dev-Kits-including-Zynq-based/ba-p/484418#feedback-success
I want to support Dave and all that, but why would anyone want to buy the Dave Jones board? Huge CPU power, but absolutely no usable I/O? Surprised he allowed his name to be used with that.
I would disagree about not downloading the dev software, even if it is several GB. Bundled software is notoriously out of date! I have a NIOS II Eval Kit, foolishly installed the software and then ran online updates - it comprehensively broke itself. Uninstalling and downloading the dev software from the manufacturer's site worked smoothly.
Be aware that the free software can have constraints. For example, the NIOS II (and any other Altera Open Core software) will only run while tethered to your PC via JTAG.
It was a joke from the manufacturer. The other side has Sagan's name and photo.
I've only been learning computers and surfing the Net for 2 years. I was one of those old fogies that refused to get with the times until I became disabled. I bore easily and get tired of video games real fast, so I started learning electronics.
I noticed right away how difficult it is to sometimes miss sarcasm and jokes. Also it is hard to express yourself totally without writing a short-story on every comment.
So with things like that, I always assume that it is meant as sarcasm or a joke at first until I know for sure that it isn't. That's also why I don't like to communicate with text messages: it's just too easy to misunderstand each other.
you shouldve wore a toga
There is also this one : open-source, a growing community and a Spartan 6 !
The Mojo by Embeddedmicro.com/
embeddedmicro.com/products/mojo-v3.html
shocking audio but great video
you voice is a bit distorted dave
it's a rather unpleasant tv shopping voice - I'm keep asking myself what is he selling ?
You do peeve me off with your negativity. For. Instance one comment you made irt the circuit diagram for one of the boards in review was about the schematics, beautifully drawn but you say "... across a few pages which is particulalry annoying..." yet if the pages we not so neatly laid out and all on one page you would propbably have made another comment about it being all cramped up. Sometimes you are very difficult please for simple reasons....
Graham Gillett eevblog is described as an "off the cuff" vlog so thats kinda the point... we get to see his entire thought process and I think that means we get more valuable information. I think that was a reasonable comment about the circuit diagram spread out over multiple pages, one page had what 6 or 7 objects on it? (not going to seek through the video to check again, just estimating that number from memory)
YOUR rec mic, makes ugly Noisés....
BUT thanks
Sorry, I meant the audio goes screwy around the 15-18min mark. got so bad I had to stop watching!!
you show your external IP in this video.
Get Camtasia, your screen capture tool is crap! Audio issues, the annoying effects, etc.
I don't think it's the screen capture tool, it's likely his hardware. He uses CamStudio I think, which works really well on my rig.
yea, it sounds like IRQ clashing with the demo board added!
HOLY SHIT IM FIRST !
Dude, what language do you speak? It's definitely not English!
688kb for just a fucking gsensor? HOW MUCH CODE IS THIS? fpga are really pain in the ass.. ok its fast but its stupidly complicated
for just blinkin led's or g-sensor readout a cheap µC will do the job
I think the point is if you can do the job with a cheap µC, you should. If you need the performance that an FPGA will deliver for an application specific task (which is not going to be a simple task), then that's when you're going to use an FPGA. I'm pretty sure Dave's not going to do a tutorial based on some critical complicated, timing-sensitive function.
that's the size for the sof, that doesn't mean the actual code is that large.
*****
xilinx and probably others support compression if you don't use encryption
***** Yes, as long as it reduces the config file size, which it almost alway will
The file is that big because it contains all the config fuse bits. Unlike a micro, this isn't just a "code", it is the entire config for whole chip. Imagine a micro that you had to download the info to *define* the entire processor each time, that's basically how an FPGA works.