Got a Big Boy "Arduino" Today

[straight_stewie]

Well, I have received my Terasic DE0-CV FPGA board yesterday. It's technically for a class, but I payed for it and it's mine to keep forever. At the heart of the board is an Alterra Cyclone V FPGA (E variant). Here are some basic specs:

 

The Board

Spoiler

• USB
• 64MB SDRAM (16 bit data bus)
• PS/2 connector
• VGA
• Micro SD card
• 10 LEds
• 10 programmable Dip Switches
• 4 Programmable push buttons
• 6, 7 segment displays
• And the big one, 2x(2x20) GPIO headers (You read that right, 80 GPIO pins)

 

The FPGA

Spoiler

• Cyclone V 5CEBA4F23C7N
• 49K programmable Logic Elements (PLEs)
• 3080 Kbits embedded memory
• 4 fractional Phase Locked Loops (PLLs)
• 303 kbits Memory Logic Arrays (MLAs)
• 66 Digital Signal Processing blocks (DSPs)
• Maximum user I/O of 224 pins
• 70K programmable registers
• 132 18 bit x 18 bit multipliers

Pics (sorry for bad quality)

Spoiler

 

So, for those of you that know what this beautiful machine is capable of, what should I do with it outside of class? The only just for fun thing I've done so far is made an 8 bit adder that outputs to the 7 segments and recognizes arithmetic overflow.

[The Sloth]

what are you planning on doing with it

[manikyath]

uhh.. just FYI, an FPGA is absolutely nothing like an arduino. they're not even within the same type of devices.

 

saying an FPGA is a big boy arduino, is like saying a barbecue is like a big boy's lunchbox.

[straight_stewie]

58 minutes ago, manikyath said:

uhh.. just FYI, an FPGA is absolutely nothing like an arduino. they're not even within the same type of devices.

 

saying an FPGA is a big boy arduino, is like saying a barbecue is like a big boy's lunchbox.

I'm aware of this. It may have been click-baity of me to say that. The other consideration is that not everyone who saw this would know right off the top of their head what an FPGA is, or what it can be use for. Any way, any good ideas for circuits I should build with it?

 

P.S some FPGA have embedded programmable microprocessors, such as any Altera Cyclone V Sxx model.

 

2 hours ago, nerdslayer1 said:

what are you planning on doing with it

Alot of it will be school work. In the intro to digital devices class at my uni we use these to simulate logic circuits instead of ICs. I get to keep it though (mostly because I had to buy it). So I'm trying to learn beyond the basic stuff that the class will teach me (which is mostly copy pasta and take pictures.

[r4tch3t]

I wonder if you could emulate an attiny in there?

[straight_stewie]

6 hours ago, r4tch3t said:

I wonder if you could emulate an attiny in there?

Probably, if I knew how. I'm still learning things. So far the most complicated thing I've done with it is add/subtract 2 8 bit user entered numbers and display the result in decimal to some 7 segment displays.

 

I know that one of the uses of FPGAs is to emulate chips pre-silicon for testing and validation, so I'm absolutely positive that it's doable, or that it's already been done.

[bob345]

emulate an atmega 2560 so it will really be a big boy arduino.

[manikyath]

20 hours ago, r4tch3t said:

I wonder if you could emulate an attiny in there?

in theory you can "emulate" any kind of circuit in there, as long as it fits within the amount of "logic blocks" it can provide.

 

there was an article a while back where someone made their own ethernet card for doing stock trading, and by applying some voodoo on the hardware level the guy managed to connect to stock trading services with essentially 0ms latency.

[straight_stewie]

12 minutes ago, bob345 said:

emulate an atmega 2560 so it will really be a big boy arduino.

You do realize that I have to define (or find) every logic function and connection between such before I can configure the FPGA right? Right now I'm at the "I can JMP with 4 bit addresses/instructions" stage.

[dany_boy]

Maybe start by taking a look at this https://www.altera.com/en_US/pdfs/literature/misc/FPGAs_For_Dummies_eBook.pdf

One of my electronics teachers said that if you want to get anything done with FPGA's you need to be very proficient in logic gates. So maybe just take the logic class now and try to do FPGA wizardry later.

Cheers!