Mimas A7 - Artix 7 FPGA Development Board

Introduction

Learning electronics can be a bit challenging sometimes, but it is really fun if you have a little patience to read, understand and experiment. FPGAs need not be any different. Let us give it a try and see how fast and easily we can learn a little bit about FPGAs and create a simple working test project with this easy FPGA tutorial. To get the best out of this tutorial series, I strongly recommend to download the tools listed at the end of this document and try doing every step as you read along.

Some time back, I wanted to learn about programming FPGAs. I started googling only to find that there is no FPGA tutorial on the web (that is the case when this tutorial was originally written. But there should be more FPGA tutorials available online now!) that can get you started with learning a little bit of HDL and take you all the way through design, simulation, and implementation. There are many tutorials online that will help you learn HDLs, some tutorials tell you how to do simulation, some may tell you about implementation, but no single tutorial that guides you step by step from basics to implementation.

I decided to write this tutorial in the hope that it may help our readers to learn a little bit of Verilog (The HDL I chose to learn first because of its syntax similarity to C), simulate your code and implement it on real hardware. This tutorial expects you to have basic knowledge in Digital Electronics, Familiarity with some programming language (preferably C). This tutorial is not meant to be an in-depth study about Verilog or FPGAs or anything, but just a guide to walk you through different basic things you need to know to design a simple digital circuit in Verilog, simulate it and implement it on hardware.

We will be using Xilinx ISE for simulation and synthesis. ISE Webpack version 14.7 is preferred, which is the latest version available (and last since Xilinx moved on to Vivado). If asked during installation, install “System Edition” because it will include Xilinx EDK as well. Please note that ISE Webpack and EDK licenses are separate. You will need ISE license installed to follow the next few parts of this tutorial. Please note that EDK evaluation license is only valid for 30 days but ISE Webpack license is perpetual. The final design will be programmed to an Elbert – Spartan 3A FPGA Development Board to make sure our code works on real hardware as well.

What is FPGA?

FPGA stands for “Field Programmable Gate Array”. As you may already know, FPGA essentially is a huge array of gates which can be programmed and reconfigured any time anywhere. “Huge array of gates” is an oversimplified description of FPGA. FPGA is indeed much more complex than a simple array of gates. Some FPGAs has built-in hard blocks such as Memory controllers, high-speed communication interfaces, PCIe Endpoints etc.. But the point is, there are a lot of gates inside the FPGA which can be arbitrarily connected together to make a circuit of your choice. More or less like connecting individual logic gate ICs (again oversimplified but a good mental picture nonetheless). FPGAs are manufactured by companies like Xilinx, Altera, Microsemi etc… FPGAs are fundamentally similar to CPLDs but CPLDs are very small in size and capability compared to FPGAs.

What are the applications of FPGA? 

Architecturally FPGAs are essentially a sea of gates which can be reconfigured to build almost any digital circuit that one can imagine. This great flexibility along with the ability to reconfigure the device with different designs at-will makes FPGA a better choice compared to ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) for a lot of applications. For example, a deep learning, AI or application acceleration system can re-program a single...