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FPGA Technology and its role in

Electronics Engineering in Nepal
July 3, 2013
FPGAs are
Everywhere

What are FPGAs ?

FPGAs have found their use in

many applicationsowing to
their reprogrammability and the
ease with which it can be done.

FPGA stands for Field Programmable

Grid Array. FPGAs are reprogrammable
silicon chips capable of being configured by the designer or the customer
after manufacturing as opposed to processors that simply follows a different
set of instructions every time they are
programmed.
FPGAs contain configurable blocks of
logic along with highly configurable
interconnects that allow for extreme
flexibility to preform tremendous variety of tasks.
The FPGA circuitry can be programmed
to mimic almost any kind of digital circuitry. Todays FPGAs have evolved to
contain a lot more than logic blocks
and interconnects. They have inbuilt
high speed transceivers, DSP blocks,
block RAMs and embedded cores
making them very popular for digital
designers and engineers.

Evolution of FPGAs
Xilinx co-founders Ross Freeman and Bernard
Vonderschmitt invented the first commercially viable FPGA in 1985the XC2064.
The XC2064 had 64 CLBs with two 3 LUTs.
FPGAs have come a long way since then. The
ubiquitous Spartan and Virtex families are
some of the most popular ones.
The Virtex-7, the highest performance FPGA
available now has two million logic cells and
a serial bandwidth up to 2.8 Tb/sec.

A Seminar on FPGA Technology and its role in Electronics Engineering in Nepal

FPGAs are used in control systems, robotics, digital signal processing, software defined radio,
ASIC prototyping, computer imaging, machine vision, neural networks and a host of other applications.
FPGA were originally used as glue
logics but now their functionality
has improved to such an extent
that they are now marketed as
SoC like the Zynq-7000 which
uses ARM based architecture.
Now FPGAs are found in telecommunication backplanes, cars, inverters, mobile phones and the
list goes on.

July 3. 2013

Communication System

Embedded

Digital Image

With an FPGA as your classroom ac-

System

Processing

Embedded Systems

FPGA finds one of the

in the TU Electronics Engineering

best applications in

Course of study already includes in-

Digital Image Processing. You can imple-

troductory VHDL as part of its course.

ment various image processing and en-

Involve your students and take it to

hancement algorithms using FPGAs and

the next level using to develop and

realize your theory into actual hardware.

emulate microcontrollers, FSMs and

Combine this with robotics and youve

cessory, you can demonstrate various

modulation techniques in class. Using
the Xilinx System Generator and investigate different
modulation
schemes and
ask your students to do the
same.

other digital circuits.

Microprocessors
Xilinx offers IP cores for Picoblaze(8bit) and Microblaze(32-bit) that use a
RISC instruction set. You can now

got a project youll be proud of!

FPGAs
in the
Classroom

combine the programmability of microprocessors with the configurability

of FPGAs.

DSP
FPGAs are perfect for DSPs. Their true parallel computing allows for faster and more
intuitive implementation of algorithms.
Most FPGAs also have built-in DSP slices that
enhance its DSP performance.

Control Systems and

Robotics
FPGAs are one of the best tools for prototyping and implementing PID controllers. The flexible IO blocks along with the
power of parallel computer, give you a
wide range of possibilities for bringing
your design to life.

A Seminar on FPGA Technology and its role in Electronics Engineering in Nepal

July 3. 2013

http://www.origin.xilinx.com/university/
Xilinx University Program (XUP) is offered by Xilinx to encourage educators and students in the field of FPGAs. It contains
numerous training videos and course content. Most of the resources are accessible to everyone. Registered educators of
XUP get access to teaching materials and lab modules that help integrate FPGAs into the classroom.
Xilinxs PlanAhead is an efficient GUI to take you from design entry to analysis to verification of
your design.

MATLAB is an indispensable tool for engineers. With Xilinx System Generator for DSP, you can
create instant HDL codes from your DSP blocks in MATLAB to be implemented in your FPGA.

The NI LabVIEW FPGA Module extend the LabVIEW graphical development platform to target
FPGAs. With the LabVIEW FPGA Module, learn to create custom I/O measurements and control
hardware without low-level hardware description languages or board-level design.

Xilinxs ISE Design Suite combines many ISim, iMPACT, Platform Studio, and EDK to meet all your
needs for your designs. Xilinx offers free WebPACK software for everyone to use.

VIVADO is another of Xilinxs recently released software products that is targeted especially for
Spartan-6, Virtex-6 and 7-series FPGAs.

ModelSim is a wonderful tool for simulating your HDL codes. It can be integrated to work with ISE to
work with XST Synthesis Tools.

http://www.xilinx.com/publications/xcellonline/
Xcell is a quarterly journal published by Xilinx. You can subscribe to it free of cost and remain up to
date on the latest technology news on FPGAs and various projects that employ FPGAs.

A Seminar on FPGA Technology and its role in Electronics Engineering in Nepal

July 3. 2013

Xilinx Spartan-3E Starter Kit

The Xilinx Spartan-3E Starter Kit Board uses the Xilinx XC3S500E Spartan-3E FPGA. It is an excellent
starting point for FPGA enthusiasts and designers.
The Starter Kit Board has the following key features that makes it suitable for lab and classroom.

Built in VGA port

USB

PS/2 port,

10/100 Ethernet

Two RS-232 ports

Switches, Knobs and LEDs

Integrated SPI based PPA, DAC and ADC

16x2 LCD display

http://fpga.sagarmatha.edu.np
xrl@sagarmatha.edu.np

A Seminar on FPGA Technology and its role in Electronics Engineering in Nepal

July 3. 2013