MEP EP#94: Al Williams and the Field Programmable Gate Arrays

Podcast Notes

• FPGA Mega Podcast with Al Williams:
  • What is an FPGA?
    • Field-programmable gate array
    • Bunch of logic gates and sea of gates, we tell them what to do
    • Writing hardware description of what it will do – writing requirements language, You’re describing requirements
    • Using VHDL or veralog, syntax is close to the C programming language
  • Why not a microcontroller?
    • Advantage with FPGA = parallel hardware, not a brain with steps and time running out
    • People use FPGAs to get fixed deadline on when processes get finished
    • 100 arduinos on an FPGA – next HackADay Article
  • Mike “Hamster” Field
  • Do you need hardware?
    • No, you can do things via simulation.
    • EDA Playground
      • Can play around for free and don’t have to create login
  • IceStick/IceStorm
    • IceStick is a Lattice FPGA dev board: good starter tool
    • IceStorm is an open source development tool chain
  • HackADay Learning FPGA Links
    • Learning Verilog for FPGAs: The Tools and Building an Adder
    • Learning Verilog for FPGAs: Hardware at Last!
    • YouTube series

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