Major FPGA link dump
FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array and is a type of programmable logic device. In lay terms an FPGA is a chip that has thousands of gates on it that are configurable into almost any logic equation.
Take this example from the TRAFFIC project here on geeksinside.
(Sorry for the crappy quality)
This set of gates can be written as OUT <= A OR B OR C in VHDL and downloaded to the FPGA which makes the physical connections of three inputs to OR gates on the chip. FPGAs are a great way to replace those discrete logic chips taking up space on your board. Here are some cool FPGA, GAL, CPLD (All programmable logic devices) links.
Xilinx - The worlds largest developer and producer of ‘fab-less’ FPGAs. They also provide a number of tools to write VHDL.
http://www.xilinx.com
Digilent - Major supplier of Xilinx development and accessory boards.
http://www.digilentinc.com/
Altera - A major supplier of PLDs
http://www.altera.com/
FPGA4Fun.com - Some cool projects showing what PLDs can do.
http://www.fpga4fun.com/
Geeksinside.com Traffic - Shameless project plug. A traffic light controller implemented on an CoolRunner CPLD using a digilent board.
http://gi.phoenixarisen.com/projectView.php?projID=4
Xilinx Spartan III Examples - Some examples of what an PLD can do (take a look at XPong ;-) )
http://www.xilinx.com/products/boards/DO-SPAR3-DK/reference_designs.htm
Xilinx Microblaze 'soft' processor - Since PLDs uses logic blocks and so do CPUs, why not put a CPU on a PLD
http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xebiz/designResources/ip_product_details.jsp?key=micro_blaze
Definitions - Gotta love wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPLD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Array_Logic
Enjoy :-)
[ Link ]
