FPGA Dev Night (7 May 7-10PM)

This will be the first installment of the FPGA classes. The only hardware requirement is that you have a Xilinx based Spartan 3 or greater (Virtex is okay as well). Spartan 2 will not be used because it requires a very old version of the Xilinx ISE.

Agenda:

1. Introductions
2. Configure Xilinx ISE web kit software
3. Comparison of FPGA and traditional microcontrollers
4. Explanation of UCF files
5. Uploading a “Hello World” program (code is provided)
6. Explain how the hello world program works
7. Modify the hello world program to blink at a different rate

Required Items:

1. Xilinx based Spartan 3 or higher FPGA (Virtex works as well)
2. Laptop running Windows or Linux (OSX will not work!)
3. Breadboard and LEDs if your FPGA board does not have LEDs
4. Laptop must have ~ 30GB of free disk space for Xilinx ISE

Because of the cost of FPGA dev boards, we will not have extras. If you have questions about what board to get, please E-Mail fpga@unallocatedspace.org.

Please download the Xilinx ISE web kit from http://www.xilinx.com/support/download/index.htm. The section you will want to download from is “Vivado Design Suite – 2013.1 Full Product Installation” We will work out the licensing in class.

Since the space runs off of donations, we would like to mention that the recommended donation for this class is $10. It is by no means a requirement! Attendance to the space, and this class, is 100% free to all!