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Forum: FPGA, VHDL & Verilog Help FPGA KIT


von trung l. (Company: vtv) (trunglqvtv)


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I am a newbie in FPGA depv, please help me choose a KIT? thanks all

von rvj (Guest)


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Hello!

Since nobody answered until now, I will summarize my experiences with 
VHDL, which I gained during the last weeks. In other words I am a newbie 
as well.

I asked a similar question to this forum in German language and I 
received the answer to try the free develoment environments from Xilinx 
and Altera and decide which one I like more.

Altera comes with a nice interactive tutorial but I have chosen Xilinx, 
because the CPLDs and FPGAs are easier to buy here in Germany. Yes, the 
availibility of the components for private persons was my argument to go 
ahead with Xilinx although I liked the IDE and the boards from Altera 
better.

So try both Xilinx Design Suite and Altera Quartus.

For your information: I bought a Xilinx Spartan 3AN board, a few CPLDS 
and a Digilent JTAG cable. I soldered a CPLD on an adapter and used that 
as a testing device. See the images shown in my question titled 
"maximale Xilinx CPLD clock Frequenz". To be honest the Spartan 3AN was 
not used until now. However this will happen soon, because VHDL is real 
fun.

In other words I recommend:

1. Start with the IDEs and decide which one you like better
2. Check if you there are CPLDs and FPGAs available for private persons 
for a reasonable price
3. Decide which vendor you like
4. Start with CPLDs, these do not loose the code after restart. You only 
need a programmer for that, a CPLD and a bread board.
5. Go ahead with some development board

In addition: Please tell what you would like to do and describe your 
knowledge.

Cheers Reinhard

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