Skip to main content

An RF Engineer’s FPGA Learning Journey

[KF5N] admits he’s not a digital design engineer; he’s more into the analog RF side of things. But he’s recently taken on a project to communicate between a Ubuntu box and an Intel MAX10 FPGA. He did a presentation at a recent ham radio convention about what he’d learned and how you could get started.

The video talks a lot about the Intel (used to be Altera). However, the nearly 40 minute video after the break isn’t a step-by-step tutorial so even if you are interested in other devices, you’ll probably enjoy watching it. If you’ve programmed even one FPGA, this video likely won’t hold your interest — you aren’t the target audience. However, at about 00:31 he does recommend some books and some very inexpensive FPGA boards, so it’s not a total wash.

[KF5N] talks about what an FPGA is and how it’s different from a microcontroller. He also recommends Cornell’s [Bruce Land’s] course materials. He wasn’t a big fan of the online courses he tried. Of course, since he’s using an Intel chip, he also recommended the Intel courses. A lot of the video covers how to save on getting a development board. The Cornell class calls for a $250 board that is pretty powerful. That’s also pretty expensive, so he recommends a lighter version for about $85.

He also talks about the toolchain and his project to interface to his Linux box. He wound up with an SPI interface that ran up to 30 MHz. He also talks about using Julia to build a driver to talk to the interface on the PC side.

We didn’t notice him mentioning our own FPGA bootcamp, although he did mention projects on Hackaday.io. If you want to see a similar video but with open source tools, [David Williams] did a talk at Superconference that gives the same kind of overview but with Yosys and other related tools.



from Hackaday https://ift.tt/2TRWXf6

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bill Gates steps down from Microsoft’s board to focus on philanthropy

In an announcement on Friday, Microsoft revealed that company co-founder Bill Gates has decided to step down from his role on its Board of Directors in order to focus on his philanthropic efforts at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This is Gate’s biggest change to his role at Microsoft since stepping down as company chairman in February 2014. According … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2We90Gu

Epic is probing an annoying Fortnite bug that causes stuck players

Epic Games has acknowledged reports of a frustrating Fortnite bug that is causing some players to become stuck in place, unable to move their character from the spot where it freezes. This same general issue is also causing issues in which players can move but are unable to access their backpack inventory, leaving them without most of their gear. Epic … Continue reading from SlashGear https://ift.tt/2Qqesmx

Uber claims top spot in Indian ride-hailing market

Uber facilitated 14 million rides a week in India last year, the American ride-hailing firm said as it claimed the tentpole position in the key overseas market. In a report  (PDF) published on the sidelines of its quarterly earnings Thursday afternoon , Uber said that it commanded over 50% of the ride-hailing market in India — among some other regions — and was the category leader. The publicly listed company cited its internal estimations for the claim, it said. In comparison, Uber handled 11 million rides a week in India in 2018, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. The revelation is especially interesting, since both Uber and its chief local rival Ola have tended to avoid talks about the number of rides they serve in India. In a 2018 blog post , Ola revealed that its platform “moves over two million people every day.” A spokesperson for the Indian startup, which like Uber counts SoftBank as an investor, declined to reveal the new figures, but issued a statement in which it ...