Fundamentals of Digital Systems Development with FPGAs

Duration

Fundamentals of Digital Systems Development with FPGAs

2 days

Overview

Field Programmable Gate Arrays have allowed engineers to develop complex, sophisticated and extremely fast digital systems. Due to their versatility, they are also by far the most feasible option for prototyping. The complexity of digital systems however, meant it is more than necessary to develop such systems in hardware description languages (HDL) rather than schematic capture.

This course is aimed for beginners to FPGA and its complete development flow. It introduces various FPGA blocks, such as transceivers, DSP blocks, RAM blocks, PLLs and etc., in addition to the configurable logic blocks.

Course highlight

Participants will have practical design experience using the Altera DE2 FPGA development board, together with the use of Altera’s Quartus II development software.

What You Will Learn

This course concentrates on the theoretical and practical knowledge to allow participants to achieve the following learning outcomes. Upon completing the course, participants would be able to:

• Know what is an FPGA and where it sits in the digital domain
• Understand the typical FPGA design flow
• Familiarise with Altera's Quartus II for design entry, analysis and simulation
• Understand the various building blocks of modern FPGAs such as block RAM, PLLs, transceivers, DSP blocks
• Gain insight into the latest trends in FPGAs, such as hard core processors and analogue blocks

Who Should Attend

This course is particularly suited for beginners to fundamental digital electronics and FPGAs. A science-based secondary education is required.

Prerequisites

Participants should have a science-based secondary education and a passion for understanding technology (at a high level).

Course Methodology

This course is presented in a workshop style with example-led lectures interlaced with hands-on practical for maximum understanding. A significant portion of the course is based on interactive dialog with the participants to further understand their needs.

Course Outline

Introduction to Digital Systems

• Digital versus analogue electronics
• Binary logic
• Logic gates for control
• Hands-on Practical 1: Introduction to Digital Logic

Introduction to FPGAs

• History of FPGAs
• FPGA structure
• Configurable Logic Elements
• Configurable interconnects
• Advantages and disadvantages of FPGAs versus discrete logic

FPGA design flow

• Design entry methods
• Hands-on Practical 2: FPGA Development Flow
• Design synthesis
• Place and routing
• Programming FPGAs
• Hands-on Practical 3: FPGA Development Flow
• Space and speed optimisation
• Timing and power analysis
• Hands-on Practical 4: Controlling Synthesis

FPGA IP blocks

• IP blocks (computation, buses, communication, storage)
• Third-party IPs
• DSP/Multiplier blocks
• RAM blocks
• Transceiver blocks (PCIe, Ethernet, etc.)
• Clock control with PLL blocks
• Hands-on Practical 5: Using IP Blocks

Advanced and Future Technology

• Soft processor core
• Hard processor core
• Analogue blocks
• Dynamically reconfigurable computing
• Hands-on Practical 6: Introduction to the NIOS II

Interactive Dialog Session

• Discussion of contemporary articles on FPGA and related technology

Programme scope, delivery arrangements and suitability are confirmed during enquiry.