Welcome to Exploring FPGA Graphics with Project F. In this series, we’ll be experimenting with FPGA graphics of all kinds, from a static square, through Pong and the Mandelbrot set, to bitmaps, text scrollers, and even 3D modelling. There’s no microcontroller in any of these designs: they’re simple logic described in SystemVerilog. This post is a quick introduction to generating graphics with FPGAs: you’ll learn about display signals and simple colour graphics. Read more

Welcome back to our three-part FPGA tutorial with SystemVerilog and the Digilent Arty A7. In part two, we’re going to learn about clocks and counting. Along the way, we’ll cover maintaining state with flip-flops, timing things with clock dividers, creating our first Verilog module, and controlling LEDs with pulse width modulation. You might be surprised how far counting takes you: by the end of this tutorial, you’ll be creating RGB lighting effects worthy of a cheesy gaming PC. Read more

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. Alan Kay, Creative Think seminar, 1982 This three-part tutorial provides a quick introduction to FPGA development with SystemVerilog and the Digilent Arty A7 board. No prior experience of FPGA development is required, but basic knowledge of programming concepts is assumed. If you can write a simple program in Arduino, Python, or JavaScript, then you shouldn’t have any trouble. Read more

It’s common for a simulation or firmware to need data loading into a memory array, ram, or rom. Fortunately, Verilog provides the $readmemh and $readmemb functions for this very purpose. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of good Verilog documentation online, so using them can be harder than it should be. This article explains the syntax and provides plenty of examples, including how to do this in Xilinx Vivado. This is part of a new series of handy recipes to solve common FPGA development problems. Read more

In this post, I test common FPGA tools for compatibility with Ubuntu 20.04 (AKA Focal Fossa), and my regular desktop OS: Pop!_OS 20.04. These tests are in no way exhaustive: I have tried using the applications as I usually do to exercise the main functionality. For me, the biggest gain in moving to 20.04 has been the responsiveness of the desktop. Tested: IceStorm Tools, NextPNR, nMigen, Verilator, Vivado, Yosys In Progress: Quartus Last updated 2020-05-23: follow WillFlux for future updates. Read more