Book Image

FPGA Programming for Beginners

By : Frank Bruno
5 (1)
Book Image

FPGA Programming for Beginners

5 (1)
By: Frank Bruno

Overview of this book

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have now become a core part of most modern electronic and computer systems. However, to implement your ideas in the real world, you need to get your head around the FPGA architecture, its toolset, and critical design considerations. FPGA Programming for Beginners will help you bring your ideas to life by guiding you through the entire process of programming FPGAs and designing hardware circuits using SystemVerilog. The book will introduce you to the FPGA and Xilinx architectures and show you how to work on your first project, which includes toggling an LED. You’ll then cover SystemVerilog RTL designs and their implementations. Next, you’ll get to grips with using the combinational Boolean logic design and work on several projects, such as creating a calculator and updating it using FPGA resources. Later, the book will take you through the advanced concepts of AXI and show you how to create a keyboard using PS/2. Finally, you’ll be able to consolidate all the projects in the book to create a unified output using a Video Graphics Array (VGA) controller that you’ll design. By the end of this SystemVerilog FPGA book, you’ll have learned how to work with FPGA systems and be able to design hardware circuits and boards using SystemVerilog programming.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to FPGAs and Xilinx Architectures
3
Section 2: Introduction to Verilog RTL Design, Simulation, and Implementation
9
Section 3: Interfacing with External Components

Project 1 – creating combinational logic

In this chapter, we've discussed signal types and how to create combinational logic. This project will contain multiple components that allow us to come up with a small calculator. It will be a rather simple one and will have the following capabilities:

  • Find the leading-one position of a vector's input via switches
  • Add, subtract, or multiply two numbers
  • Count the number of switches that have been set

The following diagram shows what the Nexys A7 board looks like:

Figure 2.4 – Nexys A7 board I/O

In the previous chapter's project, we learn how to use switches for input and LEDs for output. In this project, we'll be using all the switches in the preceding diagram for the number of ones calculator and the leading-one detector. For the leading-one detector, we'll detect the position of the left-most switch that's been set out of the 16 positions.

For the...