Introduction to FPGA Architectures

Whether you want to accelerate mathematically complex operations such as machine learning or artificial intelligence, or simply want to do some projects for fun, such as retro computing or reproducing obsolete video game machines (https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Main_MiSTer/wiki), this book will jumpstart your journey. There couldn’t be a better time to get into this field than the present, even if only as a hobby. Development boards are cheap and plentiful, and vendors have started making their tools available for free because of their low-cost, smaller parts.

In this book, we are going to build some example designs to introduce you to FPGA development, culminating in a CPU-based project that can drive a Video Graphics Array (VGA) monitor. Along the way, we’ll interface with Double Data Rate (DDR) memory, temperature sensors, microphones, speakers, and serial ports, often referred to as Universal Asynchronous Receivers/Transmitters (UARTs).

In the this chapter, we will be exploring Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and the underlying technology that creates them. This underlying technology allows companies such as AMD (formerly Xilinx) to produce a reprogrammable chip from an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) process. By the end of this chapter, you should have a good understanding of an FPGA and its components, having covered the following topics:

• What is an ASIC?
• Introducing FPGAs
• Evaluation boards