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

Introduction to fixed-point numbers

We've worked extensively with binary and BCD numbers throughout this book. Binary is great for math because addition, subtraction, and multiplication are cheap and easy. Division isn't too bad, but more time-consuming. We have only really used BCD numbers for displaying output.

In the previous chapter, we needed to introduce fixed-point numbers. Recall the temperature sensor format:

[15:7] Integer
[6:3] fraction * 0.0625
[2:0] Don't Care 

If we look at mathematical operations, we know that adding two numbers increases the result size by 1 bit and that to multiply two numbers, we need to add the sizes together. The one question is where the fixed point goes in both cases:

Figure 6.1 – Addition/subtraction and multiplication of fixed-point numbers

The important thing to remember is that when you're adding two fixed-point numbers, the digit point will remain at the same location. When multiplying...