FPGA & RISC-V Tutorials

Tutorials to get you started and improve your design skills. See also Recommended FPGA sites.

FPGA Graphics

Learn graphics at the hardware level and improve your FPGA design skills.

• Beginning FPGA Graphics - video signals and basic graphics
• Racing the Beam - simple demo effects with minimal logic
• FPGA Pong - recreate the classic arcade on an FPGA
• Display Signals - revisit display signals and meet colour palettes
• Hardware Sprites - fast, colourful graphics for games
• Framebuffers - bitmap graphics featuring Michelangelo’s David
• Lines and Triangles - drawing lines and triangles
• 2D Shapes - filled shapes and simple pictures
• Animated Shapes - animation and double-buffering

RISC-V Assembler

Get comfortable with RISC-V assembler.

• Arithmetic - load immediate (li, lui), addition (add, addi), and subtraction (sub)
• Logical - bitwise logical instructions, such as and, not, and xori
• Shift - shift instructions, such as sll, srl, and srai
• Load and Store - load and store instructions, such as lw, sw, and lbu
• Branch and Set - branch and set instructions, such as beq, bltu, bgez, and slt
• Jump and Function - jump instructions: jal and jalr, function calls, and RISC-V ABI
• Multiply and Divide - multiply and divide instructions, such as mul, mulh, and div
• Compiler Explorer - use Compiler Explorer to generate RISC-V assembly code
• Assembler Cheat Sheet - 32-bit RISC-V instruction reference, registers, and concepts

Hello FPGA

An introduction to FPGA development and Verilog with the Digilent Arty or Nexys Video boards.

• Part 1: Hello Arty 1 & Hello Nexys 1
• Part 2: Hello Arty 2 & Hello Nexys 2
• Part 3: Hello Arty 3

Maths and Algorithms

Learn about numbers and put maths to work in Verilog algorithms in this tutorial series:

• Numbers in Verilog - introduction to numbers in Verilog
• Vectors and Arrays - working with Verilog vectors and arrays
• Multiplication with DSPs - efficient FPGA multiplication
• Fixed-Point Numbers - precision without complexity
• Division in Verilog - divided we stand

Handy recipes for FPGA maths:

• Sine & Cosine - lookup sine and cosine from ROM
• Square Root - calculate square roots for integers and fixed-point

Hardware & Devices

Handy recipes for working with memory, clocks, and external hardware.

• ECP5 FPGA Clock Generation - use the ECP5 PLL to generate custom clock frequencies
• SPRAM on iCE40 FPGA - use SPRAM with Yosys and compare it with Block RAM
• Memory Types - understand FPGA memory types, including BRAM, HBM, SRAM, and DRAM
• Initialize Memory in Verilog - use $readmemh and $readmemb to initialize RAM or ROM
• Video Timings: VGA, 720p, 1080p - work with standard monitors and TVs