Anyone here ever programmed an FPGA?

[bertus]

Hello,

Have a look at this page:
http://www.asic-world.com/verilog/tools.html

Bertus

 

[ratstar]

Cool what did u implement?

I might be completely wrong, but they look more cost effective than GPU's for raw framerate performance, but Ive yet to see how many logic blocks im going to take up, I havent actually even finished the software version of what i'm putting into it.

 

[Nanren888]

One thing about FPGA development, as with software, is that functions and pre-built libraries are available, sometimes for a price. You don't always have to develop from scratch.
Google that part too.

 

[ratstar]

I know a bit more about it now.

I think putting the route in yourself manually would be the best, letting the software route for you is like trusting someone on the front of a motorbike.

coolest video->

That guys machine is parallel powered per pixel, so it would have a massive frame rate. Maybe 1 megahert?

 

[Harald Kapp]

You can't route an FPGA manually.

Routing of an FPGA is the process of assigning logical states to internal fuses or switches to configure the FPGA's computing units for the specific purpose.
What you see in the video is not a manually routed FPGA circuit. It is a schematic that is compiled by software into the routing information for the FPGA.
This is only another development style opposed to using a high level language like Verilog or VHDL. It is nevertheless routing by software.

And when it comes to big FPGAs I will always prefer coding in a high level language over a schematic. I have seen schematics for big FPGAs and I have found them almost unreadable. But that is my personal preference. The designer of these schematics obviously thought otherwise.

 

[ratstar]

oops my mistake. It would be cool if you could tho, just look at how cruddy autorouting is on a PCB designer, it would be just as bad.

 

[Harald Kapp]

just look at how cruddy autorouting is on a PCB designer, it would be just as bad.

There is a big difference between routing a PCB and routing an FPGA:
On a PCB the router has to create interconnects between a variety of different components from scratch. On a PCB you have to deal with comparatively long traces, too, which can lead to issues with signal integrity.
In an FPGA the router has predefined comparatively short traces and predefined interconnects which are turned on or off to create the logic circuit. That is a different procedure and imho less prone to problems than on a PCB.

It would be cool if you could tho,

You wouldn't want to define the settings of a few hundred thousand or millions of fuses manually. I doubt you'd think that to be cool after the first few dozen settings. I doubt even more that you could do that with less errors than the compiler does.