Cheapest FPGA board to study VHDL on

I'm sure you have seen it on Ebay but have a look at our Raggedstone1. Ebay wise look for the non-EEC price if you are in the US. Similar pricing on our own website. It just about gets under you $100 mark depending on the current exchange rate. For something much cheaper you probably talking about a CPLD board.

John Adair Enterpo> Figured this was the place to ask (comp.arch.embedded or comp.arch.fpga)

To learn vhdl, all you need is a simulator to verify your uut and testbench code and quartus or ise to view the rtl schematic.

A board is of little value until the code is complete and tested.

-- Mike Treseler

Mike, I felt that having an FPGA board, where I can download the code, and do things ... "see" the results for myself, would only serve to reinforce what I am reading

A simulator is one thing ... "seeing" the results on bare metal is another

Mike Treseler wrote:

Unless you are trying to interface to something else, and need to prove that what you designed can talk to it, a simulator will "show" you much more than you will ever see from an FPGA board. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with the satisfaction that is gained from seeing your project "working in real life", but that has nothing to do with any reinforcement of knowledge gained. I should add that the insights gained through thorough simulation (both rtl and gate-level, post-route timing simulations), synthesis, place & route, and static timing analysis will far exceed those gained from "seeing" it work.

But seeing it work will probably provide more satisfaction than all those activities.

Andy

samiam wrote:

Altera MAXII developers kit. I think this was $99 last time I checked. It has LED's, USB, LCD display, temprature sensor, PCI, etc.

Petter

i'm thinking of getting the MAX II $100 board too. can it work external to the pc or pci only. does it auto program, can it be used to program other cpld and can the display be made external off board, for case mounting? i'd have to revert to on board gfx again as no free pci while agp in use.

cheers

Do you mean this board?

Looks like it costs $150 and it is an CPLD, only. And do you need an additional programmer for it? If you want to try Altera and want to spend $149, this is a nice board:

Anything is included on the board, like USB Blaster for programming and it has some nice interfaces, like video out and audio in/out and demo version of Nios etc.

If you want to try Xilinx, Spartan3 is nice, too and costs $99 (there is anything included, too, so you don't need any additional programmer) :

I'm sure Lattice and other vendors have good development boards, too, but I have tested both boards, the Spartan 3 starter kit (and Spartan 3E starter kit) and the TREX C1, so I can guarantee that they are very good for this price.

Altium LiveDesign (USD$99)

Regards,

Digilent has a $59 board with a 100k-gate FPGA, switches, port connectors, LEDs etc.

As it says, the board costs less than the textbook.

I think that seeing something work in reality is an important part of learning, even though simulators give you more insight into what's happening. Otherwise you get to your first real design after a few years of learning VHDL and then you ask 'what does non-synthesizable mean?'

After all, if you never intend to implement your design on an FPGA, what's the point in learning VHDL?

I pretty sure that xilinx has some spartan 3 starter boards for $100 too. Look on their estore.

That's true, but it's not much fun.

You don't need a lot to get the code complete and compiled. You can learn a lot about testing by comparing what you meant it to do with what actually happens in the real world. And acquiring the skills of using the scope to debug hardware is a useful exercise in itself, if the OP doesn't know it already. And it's fun.

These people do some low- cost FPGA boards. You can probably get the VHDL stuff free from the FPGA vendor.

Paul Burke

I think that Andy got exactly the point:

As far as I understood we are talking about "learning VHDL" (as samian asked), not implementing a project which will have an interface with some other stuff. The only limitation in simulation is to think about all the cases your hardware will run through and this is where hardware is most probably needed, just because you missed to simulate a rare (but possible) case. But on a stand alone project I think that an evaluation board is even less needed (even because most of the time you will not implement on evaluation board, but on custom made boards or some others "standard programmable" boards). This will save you money and will let you concentrate on the most important point (to me) at the very beginning: functional vhdl verification.

Mike Treseler:

and I totally agree.

Any of the Digilent boards are great resources, and there are lots of Univ classes designed around them.

They are all very affordable.

If you are a Univ student, I'd suggest getting the XUP-V2PRO board ... best value on the planet, and amazing resale value :)

If you want to build projects which are FPGA based, I'd suggest something like one of the Spartan boards ... combined with a proto board. Get one with more gates than you need, don't skimp ... as most of the MicroCore projects are fun later.

This is another low-cost option - not many IOs but easy to add your own on some protoboard :

The Digilent/Xilinx Spartan 3 Starter Kit is $99, and should do everything you want.

Leon

A byteblaster II prgramming cable is included. I got the board for $99 once. Maybe it was a special deal. The MAXII is a CPLD, but looks much like an FPGA even though there is an internal FLASH for configuration and user data.

The Spartan3 is a nice starter kit as well.

Petter

It can be powered by USB so you don't need to have it in your PCI slot unless you will be designing some PCI logic. I don't know what you mean by autoprogram, but you download the programming file into the internal FLASH in the MAXII. When you power it on it will load the configuration from there. You can use it to program other devices, but that will require you to design some logic. Actually I use the board to program some microcontrollers over USB.

Petter