Your First FPGA Development Board
This article will teach you how to choose correctly.
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No matter if it is represented by courses in digital circuit logic, computer organization principles/architecture; or participation in various college student electronic design and innovation competitions; or the enormous application demands in the AI era, FPGA has become a recognized essential skill in the EECS circle.
Today’s topic is about how beginners can correctly choose their first FPGA development board…
FPGA has become popular in the hardware field today, with FPGA cloud servers, machine vision, artificial intelligence, and big data targeted acceleration analysis. The low power consumption and reconfigurable hardware advantages of FPGA have been fully utilized, breaking away from its previous singular applications in communication, medical, and military fields. With such a hot hardware, many students who learn about industry information will naturally not miss this opportunity and will certainly want to learn about FPGA. However, there are many types of FPGA development boards, and the chips from various manufacturers are also different. How to choose a suitable FPGA is the most troublesome problem for every student who has just come into contact with FPGA.
In fact, for any device selection, there are three aspects: manufacturer, performance, and price. Let’s talk about these three aspects respectively.
FPGA Manufacturers
FPGA manufacturers can actually be counted on one hand. Really? Let’s count:Xilinx (USA), Altera (acquired by Intel, USA), Actel (acquired by Microsemi, USA), Lattice (USA), Atmel (acquired by Microchip, USA).
Domestic FPGA manufacturers started very late, like Unisoc, Jingwei Yage, etc., which are not very famous, and the actual usage is also very rare, so I won’t elaborate on them. The focus is still on introducing the first four.
The world’s largest FPGA manufacturer and the pioneer of FPGA. The first FPGA device, Xilinx XC2064 FPGA, was designed by Xilinx.
(spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/chip-hall-of-fame-xilinx-xc2064-fpga),
So it is not surprising that Xilinx has been the leader in FPGA for many years. Many FPGA core technologies have been developed by Xilinx and are widely used in various industries, providing a full range of solutions from high-end to low-cost.
Although it is the third-largest FPGA manufacturer in the world, its scale and share are far less than the previous two. Mainly provides some low-capacity FPGA applications, such as power management, logic interconnection, simple logic implementation, etc. It is also used in some mobile terminals (phones), mostly low-cost solutions with small size.
With all that said, the boards you can buy are basically Xilinx and Altera. There are Lattice boards, but not many, and I haven’t seen Actel at all. So should you choose Xilinx or Altera? Objectively speaking, the product lines of Xilinx and Altera are mutually comparable. Whether it is pure FPGA or SoC integrated with processors, both have overlaps. In China, Altera was more commonly used years ago, for example, DJI’s drones mostly used Altera until the latest Inspire 2 adopted Xilinx’s FPGA chips.Now, after Intel’s acquisition of Altera, Altera has not been very proactive in personal development, and there is not much training and guidance for college students, while Xilinx has started to make efforts in universities along with its university partner Digilent. Xilinx is currently focusing on the popularization of FPGA, lowering the development and usage threshold, making it relatively more approachable. Therefore, from this trend, Xilinx is a popular choice in the next 3-5 years.Intel’s focus is mainly on server acceleration applications, such as the integration of x86 with FPGA, DSP, etc., in Intel Xeon E5 v4, which has a significant effect on big data and key server node acceleration. Therefore, in FPGA big data processing acceleration and server node optimization, Intel may have an advantage. So, when choosing a manufacturer, it is best to learn according to your development needs. Of course, if conditions allow, it is best to get in touch with both.
FPGA Performance
Measuring FPGA performance is actually quite difficult, as there are many parameters to consider, such as the number of logic elements (Logic Elements or Logic Cells) in the chip, the size of memory on the chip, the number of DSPs, the number of specific high-speed transceivers, device speed grades, etc. For SoCs, it is necessary to consider not only the characteristics of the FPGA but also the relevant characteristics of the processor. It really is the case that specific fields have specific chip ranges, and you need to look at the parameter manual in detail to determine. For college students doing small projects based on FPGA, Xilinx’s Spartan/Artix series and Intel’s MAX 10/Cyclone series are the most common. Only when the school has major research projects using FPGA will they come into contact with higher-end products.
FPGA Price
The price of FPGA is positively correlated with the integration of the chip. The products that students use are all low-density, highly optimized products. Generally, FPGA development boards are priced around 1000 yuan, which is the price that most developers can afford. However, it is an undeniable fact that FPGA prices are relatively high (even so, remember that development boards over 3000 yuan during college are excessive). Unlike the x86 general processor field where AMD disrupts the market, the situation of two major players in FPGA has always existed. Therefore, if you really want to learn FPGA, you still need to invest significantly.
So, under normal circumstances, it is ideal to come into contact with FPGA through school platforms. Most schools generally have laboratories cooperating with manufacturers, which is a great opportunity to try without having to pay out of pocket, adding unnecessary burden. Of course, for those with wealth, having a development board yourself is the best. There are many FPGA board design manufacturers, internationally recognized ones like Digilent, etc. When purchasing development boards, it is recommended to choose boards from well-known manufacturers like these, mainly for the quality of materials, good performance guarantees, and rich introductory learning materials. This way, you can learn and apply in actual projects.
How to Choose FPGA Correctly
In the early stages of learning FPGA, I personally think there is no need to rush to purchase a specific FPGA development board, as the novelty of getting a new board may cause you to lose your learning direction. You can first learn the syntax of Verilog HDL, VHDL, or SystemVerilog development languages and verify the syntax through Xilinx or Altera (Intel)’s integrated development tools. At the same time, master necessary simulation verification methods to lay a solid foundation for future development. After mastering a certain language foundation, the development board will become an essential experimental environment in the FPGA learning process. Because any syntax logic ultimately needs to be demonstrated through physical objects. Without a development board, you cannot conduct board-level verification, and you cannot truly validate the correctness of the design. At the same time, in the advanced learning stage, timing verification also needs to be conducted on the development board. In addition, learning FPGA in conjunction with the development board helps to understand and develop hardware structures.
Compared to other development boards (51, DSP, ARM development boards), FPGA development boards are indeed quite expensive. However, to master a technology, I personally recommend buying an introductory board, as this will speed up your learning. If conditions allow, it is recommended to buy development boards produced by the official or its agents, as official materials are complete, which can help you avoid detours. If you choose low-priced FPGA development boards or unknown clone boards on certain platforms, you often need a deeper understanding of the hardware design of the development board, otherwise, it is easy to encounter problems.
From the perspective of engineering applications, Xilinx currently has a slight advantage in industrial applications. I suggest choosing suitable devices and development boards from engineering projects. When selecting development boards, pay attention to the following points:
1. Choose chips that support the latest integrated development environments (Quartus 16 or Vivado 2016.04), so you can choose Xilinx 7 series and later FPGA chips or Altera Stratix4, Cyclone 5, Arria 5 and later chips.
2. Choose chips with a slightly larger resource scale, with logic unit scale of at least 50k or more (Xilinx chips are marked with resources *4 to compare with Altera chips).
3. Development boards with rich on-board resources or many expansion interfaces. For beginners without projects, resources on the development board are more suitable for familiarizing with hardware and learning FPGA; for project-oriented purposes, it is recommended to choose development boards with rich expansion interfaces.
4. Price should certainly be considered, but do not just seek cheap options; also consider the quality of the product, performance, and richness of learning resources. Currently, Digilent offers student discounts on their official website, greatly enhancing the cost-performance ratio of development boards.
Since I have had more contact with Xilinx development boards, I will recommend a few FPGA development boards. In addition to having complete official materials and high reliability, Xilinx development boards have a unique advantage of having built-in analog-to-digital converters (ADC), which facilitates signal processing design.
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Recommendation 1: Basys 3
This is the first pocket-sized development board launched for the Xilinx 7 series chips, with a suitable resource size and high cost-performance ratio. It is suitable for college teachers and students, especially those studying digital circuit courses. It has rich peripheral and expansion interface resources, facilitating the learning of basic peripheral drivers while also allowing for the expansion of other module functions. You can learn about Xilinx’s latest FPGA architecture while mastering Xilinx’s integrated development tools.
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Recommendation 2: Zybo
The most cost-effective Zynq7000 development board, suitable for students who combine embedded software and hardware, requires a certain foundation in embedded systems and FPGA development experience. It is recommended to start with bare-metal operation after becoming familiar with FPGA, then proceed to learn embedded systems. The Zynq-7000 series chips are heterogeneous, combining FPGA with dual-core Cortex-A9, making it most suitable for learning FPGA hardware acceleration. Additionally, the new upgraded Zybo-Z7 has recently been released, significantly improving performance while also including a Xilinx SDSoC voucher, which is indeed impressive.
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Recommendation 3: Arty Series
FPGA development boards specifically designed for geeks, suitable for lightweight embedded engineering applications. They also come with Arduino Shield interfaces for easy expansion of Arduino peripheral modules.
In Conclusion:
Learning FPGA has a relatively high entry threshold, but the employment prospects are also much better. The road ahead is slow, and the sea of learning is boundless. Having written so much, I hope it can help those who are just starting to learn FPGA.