H H

F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
PD PD

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Introduction to FPGA
Agfianto Eko Putra
DSP & Embedded System Research Group
Electronics & Instrumentation Dept.

What are FPGAs?

— FPGAs are programmable digital logic chips.
— What that means is that you can program them to do
almost any digital function.
— Here's the general workflow when working with
FPGAs:
You use a computer to describe a "logic function" that you want.
You might draw a schematic, or create a text file describing the
function, doesn't matter.
You compile the "logic function" on your computer, using a
software provided by the FPGA vendor. That creates a binary file
that can be downloaded into the FPGA.
You connect a cable from your computer to the FPGA, and
download the binary file to the FPGA.
That's it! Your FPGA behaves according to your "logic function".

Agfianto Eko Putra 2

 H H
F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
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What are FPGAs?

— Keep in mind that
You can download FPGAs as many time as you want - no limit -
with different functionalities every time if you want.
If you make a mistake in your design, just fix your "logic
function", re-compile and re-download it. No PCB, solder or
component to change.
The designs can run much faster than if you were to design a
board with discrete components, since everything runs within
the FPGA, on its silicon die.
FPGAs loose their functionality when the power goes away (like
RAM in a computer that looses its content). You have to re-
download them when power goes back up to restore the
functionality.

Agfianto Eko Putra 3

Who makes FPGAs?

— There are (at least) 5 companies making FPGAs
in the world. The first two (Xilinx and Altera)
hold the bulk of the market:
Xilinx is the biggest name in the FPGA world. It
tends to be the density and technology leader.
Altera is the second FPGA heavyweight, also a well-
known name.
Lattice, Actel, Quicklogic are much smaller and
are the "specialty shops".

Agfianto Eko Putra 4

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Xilinx
— Xilinx has traditionally been the silicon
technology leader. Xilinx general
philosophy is to provide all the features
possible, at the cost of extra complexity.
Biggest and most flexible (feature-full) devices.
Complex architecture, powerful devices.

Agfianto Eko Putra 5

Xilinx Quote…
— There has never been a better time to be a
design engineer. With today’ s products from
Xilinx, you can accomplish more, in less time,
with less risk, than ever before. With our
Virtex™-4 FPGA family, you have the ideal
silicon platform to tackle today’ s most complex
system-design challenges, and with our ISE™
software you can unleash that power. The Xilinx
ISE tools continue to be the design community’ s
number-one choice; we hear this loud and clear
from our customers. (from Xcell Journal, Issue
55, 2005)

Agfianto Eko Putra 6

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Altera
— Altera philosophy is to provide the
features that most people want while
keeping their devices easy to use.
Lean and efficient devices architecture.
Powerful devices.

Agfianto Eko Putra 7

Lattice, Actel and Quicklogic

— These companies have specialty products.
Lattice, better known for its CPLDs, have also
an "instant-on" FPGA family.
Actel and QuickLogic have antifuse
(programmable-only-once) products.

Agfianto Eko Putra 8

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FPGAs vs. CPLDs

— Are FPGAs and CPLDs the same thing? No
— Both are programmable digital logic chips. Both are
made by the same companies. But they have different
characteristics:
FPGAs are "fine-grain" devices. That means that they contain a
lot (up to 100000) of tiny blocks of logic with flip-flops. CPLDs
are "coarse-grain" devices. They contain relatively few (a few
100's max) large blocks of logic with flip-flops.
FPGAs are RAM based. They need to be "downloaded"
(configured) at each power-up. CPLDs are EEPROM based. They
are active at power-up (i.e. as long as they've been programmed
at least once...).

Agfianto Eko Putra 9

FPGAs vs. CPLDs

— ...
CPLDs have a faster input-to-output timings than
FPGAs (because of their coarse-grain architecture,
one block of logic can hold a big equation), so are
better suited for microprocessor decoding logic for
example than FPGAs.
FPGAs have special routing resources to implement
efficiently binary counters and arithmetic functions
(adders, comparators...) and RAM. CPLDs do not.
FPGAs can contain very large digital designs, while
CPLDs can contain small designs only.

Agfianto Eko Putra 10

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Design Flow that can be automated

Agfianto Eko Putra 11

Programmable Logic Array

Agfianto Eko Putra 12

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Programmable Array Logic

Agfianto Eko Putra 13

Simple Programmable Logic Device

Agfianto Eko Putra 14

 H H
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Agfianto Eko Putra 15

Agfianto Eko Putra 16

 H H
F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
PD PD

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Agfianto Eko Putra 17

What we’
ve got…

Agfianto Eko Putra 18

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FPGAs vs. microcontrollers

— Are FPGAs and microcontrollers the same
thing? No!
Microcontrollers are based on a CPU architecture. As
all CPUs, they execute instructions in a sequential
manner.
FPGAs are programmable logic and run in a parallel
fashion.
— Microcontrollers have on-chip peripherals that
also execute in parallel with their CPU. But they
are still much less configurable than
programmable logic.

Agfianto Eko Putra 19

Agfianto Eko Putra 20

 H H
F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
PD PD

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Agfianto Eko Putra 21

Agfianto Eko Putra 22

 H H
F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
PD PD

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Agfianto Eko Putra 23

Agfianto Eko Putra 24

 H H
F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
PD PD

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Agfianto Eko Putra 25

Agfianto Eko Putra 26

 H H
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PD PD

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Agfianto Eko Putra 27

Agfianto Eko Putra 28

 H H
F-XC A N GE F-XC A N GE
PD PD

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Didukung oleh…

Agfianto Eko Putra 29