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 5 – Listening and learning

This project requires the microphone on the Nexys A7 board. To run this on the Basys 3 board, an additional pmod microphone needs to be installed, interfaced, and the XDC file modified accordingly.

The Nexys A7 board has a digital microphone on board that we can use to capture the ambient noise, speech, and suchlike from the environment the board is in. We'll be utilizing this microphone to capture sound. In order to do that, we'll need to explore the format of the data and how to sample it.

It's also possible to play it back.

What is a PDM microphone?

A digital microphone needs to take analog audio data and convert it to digital data usable by electronics. A Pulse Density Modulation (PDM) signal is captured by a 1-bit DAC that encodes its output as a string of pulses. When the pulses are denser over a period of time, they represent larger values. In Figure 5.1, we see a signal from the testbench as a sine wave. The...