How to Get Started With FPGA Programming? | 5 Tips for Beginners

Boards Compatible with the tools I use in my Tutorials:
In this video I'll share 5 tips with you on how to get started with FPGA programming.

Subscribe for new tutorials, product reviews, and conceptual videos. Feel free to leave a comment for any questions you may have.

Xilinx Software Tools (FREE):

Altera Software Tool (FREE):

[philipacovington]

FPGAs are really great for those interesting in retro-computing or learning how a CPU works. I am implementing Ben Eater's 8-bit computer in an FPGA in a series of videos on my channel for anyone interested. Very cool stuff!

[mln]

I'm glad you set that straight from the beginning.

That's right if this is not a passion for you (the person watching this video), then look for something else. It's not about money, not even a job, it's about embedded being a passion in life. If this is a passion for you, the jobs and money will come without much effort and you won't actually care about that.

[neethumariammathew]

I like the freedom that FPGA gives in lab work, other than searching through numerous devices I need

[cstanford]

Tip 1: before you buy a board, simulate your design in the free simulator (vivado). Make sure you fully understand your design and that it fits easily inside your target board.
Tip 2: divide your project into simple pieces. Develop your pieces one at a time. If you hit a show-stopper, don't worry as you just lost time and didn't pay any money for the software or the board.
Tip 3: accept the fact that after you program your part, it won't work as expected for at least 3 days. Your simulation did not accurately match your actual input signals. You messed up your voltage logic levels. You will need (at minimum a multimeter and a $12 logic analyzer) access to an oscilloscope. You need to already know how to use all 3 of those items if you are going to get your design working in 3 days.
Tip 4: try to use an existing design and do small modifications to it. An existing design is already debugged, and you can quickly see which modification you made which caused it to not place-n-route.
Tip 5: make lots of useful fpga designs and save the bin files. Use openFPGAloader to easily program your board (not the large clunky Vivado).
Tip 6: pick the fpga maker with the best free software (Xilinx/Vivado) and stay loyal. Why learn another tool, when there are so many other things that need to be learned?
Here is a link to a simple design to simulate.

[DaveFer]

Motivation: I work on a historic, globally-visible project that involves life-support functionality. I asked for tasks that are on a lower level in our embedded architecture. I was given task of writing FPGA drivers (Linux). Yikes. I love it, but it's very daunting. I need to drink from the firehose of knowledge. That's what brought me to your channel. Thanks for doing all this. :)

[ticktock]

you know there is many videos about FPGA but i can say i seen this video you have made back in2018 and its a big help to have a person explane it so clear it very good and get me in to FPGA, i have order a MOJO i hope this is a good start cost about 62 AUD

[Tapajara]

I've been designing the programmer model for a high-end 64-bit CPU. I already have a working assembler but I need hardware to run the machine code on. I have considered writing an emulator using ARM64 but that won't do much for me and it will be a time hog. I've been studying Verilog and even bought an expensive kit from Xilinx but their tools are not easy to use. It is a Kintex UltraScale FPGA KCU105 Evaluation Kit.

[fortheprofit]

I want to do it because i like electronics and want to expand my bag of tricks.

[MilanKarakas]

Searched for non-volatile storing definitions on FPGA. My first attempt to put simple gate onto FPGA (Cyclone II) failed - after power cycle everything is lost. How to make it permanent?

[mattgagliardo]

I want to learn FPGA to take on a new challenge, SWE for 10 years looking to build the skills

[hansformer]

A good starter board is the tinyFPGA BX, it also has an graphical IDE

[angelg]

Not my job and this makes it exciting. Motivation is that I failed an almost finished personal project with lattice FPGA. It was a better soundcard than a crappy engineered creative sb x-fi.

[lorenzoporciani]

I want to convert an hdmi (or dvi source) to a RGBS analog signal! So I can use newer stuff on older monitors :3

[muhammadadil]

Hi Greidi,
I am a senior year student at GIKI, the title of my Final Year Project is "IOT based Home Automation using FPGA". I only had a little knowledge about FPGAs before watching your videos, but now i think i am ready to start it. I just need an advice on FPGA development board, which board would you recommed for this particular project; we are asked to use Xilinx and the tasks this project must perform include security monitoring of home, vary light intensity, vary temperature and some other basic home electronics.
I see you as my advisor on this project, so your guidance is all i need.

[ainistirman]

that was a really simple tutorial and i get what i want omg thankyouu

[ashishchauhan]

Your videos are amazing ? I learn something new about FPGA mining. Can you please let me know about mining of FPGA? Your videos are very simple and easy to understand .

[gandolfgrey]

I have many mining boards and want to develop new bitstreams for coins what videos should I watch?

[SimplyEmbedded]

Hope you enjoyed watching this video! Leave a comment on why you started with FPGA programming or why you are thinking of starting with it?

[realsrvbhtngr]

Hey,
You make really good videos.
I need your help right now. I'm totally new to all these and soon I will be doing a project (academic) on this FPGAs. Firstly, I don't know which board to choose. So, can you suggest me which FPGA development board will be perfect or atleast adequate for implementing image processing algorithms on it? I require a board that can smoothly perform image processing operations.

[thatboiaj]

I want to learn it so that I can gain a deeper understanding of how the things around us work and how they are evolving, from what I've read FPGA's are used in the development of some very bleeding edge tech and that they're aren't that many people for the specialised role, I am looking to self teach with almost no understanding of digital design so I'm looking to tackle that first, keep up the vids though man there's hardly any good content that I have found on FPGA's maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. do you recommend nandland as a learning resource?