which one among the available FPGAs is best for a fresher?

hi, i am new to this field and studying my under graduate course on FPGAs. to perform experiments practically i am planning to buy one chip. so please suggest me which one among the available FPGAs suit me so that i get in touch with it and also suggest me any softwares available to interface the same with my pc. thanks in advance waiting for responce, bye chaitu

Reply to
chaitu11311
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Chaitu

The two biggest suppliers of FPGAs Xilinx and Altera both have free software for their lower end device families Spartan and Cyclone respectively. Spartan-3 and Cyclone2 are the latest. Between them they have something like

80-90% of the FPGA market so good to have experience of for finding jobs after graduation.

If you are looking to add a chip to one of your own circuits then you will want to look for a package that is easy to mount on a board. None of the modern packages are an easy solder onto a circuit unless you have profession kit especially BGA packages. If you just want to buy a board to use a number of vendors including ourselves have low cost products for students. We even have student based pricing under our UAP scheme.

John Adair Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Raggedstone1. The Low Cost Spartan-3 Development Board.

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Reply to
John Adair

Actually, if looking to add an FPGA chip to one of your own designs, BGA is by far the easiest for a hobbiest. Hand soldering a 100-200 pin QFP varient package is a nightmare for a hobbiest without a stereo microscope and a very fine low temp iron, and lots of aquired skill. Even stenciling it is a nightmare, as it takes accurate placement to avoid smearing the paste.

There are several tricks for prototype BGA assembly which work well for a hobbiest, and a low volume commercial proto lab as well. Solder paste for attachment is a super pain, as it requires accurate placement to avoid smearing the paste - nearly impossible by hand without a placement fixture. What works much better is to manually wet all the BGA pads on the PCB by coating the PCB with ample water soluable flux and dragging a large solder ball across all the pads with a fat "screwdriver" soldering temp on a temp controlled iron -- do not linger, to avoid heat damage to the pcb or device. Do this until all the pads have a uniform solder bump and are shinny. This works equally well for cleaning up a BGA device prior to reballing using the SolderQuik preforms. Then wash off the expended flux, dry and bake to remove any moisture trapped by the cleaning process to avoid popcorning pads off. Next, apply a liberal amount of water soluable flux to the pcb and BGA balls, and carefully mate the balls to the pads by eye. If you have a device outline on the pcb that is accurately registered to the pads, this helps. (either copper, soldermask or silkscreen). It sometimes help to bring two ball pads on the outside edge of the board to a land large enough to touch with the soldering iron, which allows fusing a ball on opposite sides/corners of the package to hold the device in place during handling for assembly. Ditto for QFP packages

-- prewetting the pads and leads with an iron, and then just fluxing for assembly is sometimes easier than accurate placement with paste - as you can always drag the iron with a little dangling solder across the leads that didn't quite wet/attach with a fillet well enough.

If you have a toaster oven, take some time to calibrate it, and get a temp stick.

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Stencils for all the small parts which can be easily hand placed is a great idea too.

While I use a couple Chipmaster SMD-1000's in my lab, I've also use my wifes table top convection oven and a toaster oven for demonstrations for local hobbiests. I suggest preheating the oven/toaster to about

325F and setting the project board into the preheated oven, then cycle the oven/toaster up above soldering temp by 15-25 degrees and leave it there about 2-3 times longer than the traditional temp profile of a commercial reflow oven as there isn't quite as much energy available to heat the board and parts to temp as quickly. This is where a temp stick is useful, but not required.

It will generally take a few boards before you find exactly the perfect process that leaves all the parts properly wetted and attached with minimum heat and process time. For BGA's this is easy to confirm, by making sure the balls all have a uniform "squat" which confirms the inside balls came to temp, and wetted, allowing the package to fall slightly and left the balls slightly compressed in shape. All other parts take a good magnifying glass or lab scope, and verify the wetting left strong fillets on all the connections. Where the fillet is obvious, but lacking in volume, take note as that pad needs a larger paste mask opening next time.

Reballing BGA packages can be done the same way. But another process is sometimes easier. That is to use a digital hot plate, or heavy electric skillet and an inexpensive non-contact IR thermometer. Set the BGA in the reballing frame on the preheated surface which is just over soldering temp, and cover with a shinny preheated lid, and turn the heat source off. The mass in the hot plate or skillet will bring the BGA balls to temp, then cool back below plastic state. After a few minutes remove the lid partially (lift one edge) to allow the device to cool, but not hard shock it with cold air. Then remove and place on a warm surface to further cool.

Reply to
fpga_toys

Do you really want a raw chip to put on a board you are designing? Or do you want a board that includes an FPGA you can easily program?

Xilinx's Spartan 3 starter kit is $100.

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Reply to
Hal Murray

Unless you're planning to do a fair amount of work as a technician, you probably want a pre-fabbed board rather than just a chip.

Xilinx has a Spartan 3 starter kit for about $100 here:

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Altera has a Max II development kit for about $150 here:

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Lattice has a number of development boards around $100-200 available here:

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When/if you try to enter their online store, they'll ask for a user name and password -- but if you cancel, it'll let you in (and I haven't seen a place to sign up to get a user name or password either).

Enterpoint has a couple of nice looking boards available here:

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Unfortunately, while the prices are pretty nice, shipping to the US is a bit on the steep side.

Avnet has a fairly extensive list of development boards available here:

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FPGA4FUN.com has a number of (mostly Altera-based) boards available at quite reasoanble prices here:

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That's far from an exhaustive list, but it's probably more than enough to overwhelm you for now! :-)

One final note: keep in mind that you'll have to develop controllers for most of what's on the board to actually be able to use them. The connectors for PCI, Ethernet, USB, etc., each need to be driven correctly to do anything useful. It's pretty easy to develop and/or find cores for things like serial ports, but quite a bit more difficult (and/or expensive) to deal with PCI (for one example). Likewise with things like on-board memory -- just for example, a big DDR2 SDRAM may sound sexy, but be prepared for a fair amount of work before you can get data into or out of it dependably.

I haven't played with anywhere close to all of these, but of the ones I have played with, the Spartan 3 starter kit probably has the most accessible peripherals. Pretty much when you decide to do something that needs to use the memory, serial port, LEDs, etc., you just do it and it works. You could download and use any of several UART cores for the serial port (for example) but I've never bothered -- I suspect it's probably close to as much work to figure out how to use somebody else's UART as it is to write at least a simple one of your own (though somebody else's might be more efficient).

-- Later, Jerry.

The universe is a figment of its own imagination.

Reply to
Jerry Coffin

Well I better put our case when mentioning prices. Raggedstone1 is US $90 , ?75, £50.

If you don't have a scrap motherboard and power supply it can be bundled with the PCI I/O Header that allow stand alone use (not in PC and gives 50 extra 5V tolerant I/O). Bundle is $117 (discounts on quantities) and it is a bigger chip (XC3S400) that the standard starter kit has. If you are a student or University we can offer up to a XC3S2000 (RS1-2000) on the board at surprisingly good prices. There may be extended lead times on the bigger chip fits but we will see how popular they are to the target group and maybe start to hold more stock. The RS1-1500 is being made for stock and would be the recommend "large" chip version due to the support of the XC3S1500 in Xilinx Webpack tools. The XC3S2000 is not covered by Webpack.

Find Raggedstone1 here

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.

John Adair Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Hollybush1. The PC104+ Spartan-3 Development Board.

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Reply to
John Adair

For anyone that's interested the ?75 is 75 Euros.

Carriage has recently dropped to all locations and we are working to drop in further. I believe US next day carriage (Customs etc allowing) will drop to same as the EEC courier rate this week TBC.

John Adair Enterpoint Ltd. - Home of Raggedstone1. The 75 Euro Spartan-3 Development Board.

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Reply to
John Adair

You also might want to look at the T-Rex C1 Development Kit

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For starting, all it needs is an USB port (power via USB).

Reply to
Herman Dullink

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