Category Archives: FPGA

FPGA

Growing as an FPGA Developer

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March 19, 2023 – Initial

I get asked pretty often about how to get into FPGA design or how to become a good or even great FPGA developer. Since I get asked quite often, I decided to put my thoughts down here instead of typing it out again and again forever. I hope what I write here will help you on your journey. I think some of the content might be useful to non-FPGA developers even though I don’t really plan for it to be as such.

This article is meant for readers who have already made it through their first FPGA course, maybe they are in a masters program or they might be in the first few years of their new job as an FPGA developer. It is not really meant for beginners but might be useful for them none the less.

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FPGA

FPGA – Xilinx JTAG to AXI Master from XSDB and Python

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One of the most annoying things when working on an early design on an FPGA development kit is a lack of run-time register interfaces without a lot of effort.

While looking for an interface that would work on basically any Vivado supported Xilinx FPGA I came across the JTAG to AXI Master core supplied by Xilinx. Unfortunately it has a cumbersome interface that is intended for the user to drive from Vivado’s TCL console which is not always the most convenient. Others have been looking for a C API to interact with the hw_server directly. There seems to be someone that has had put together a C library but I was unable to get the files. I wanted something easier to use anyways so I began to look elsewhere for a solution.

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FPGA

FPGA – Conflicting FTDI Devices in Quartus

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Recently I started using an FTDI FT232H in FT245 synchronous FIFO mode with an Intel MAX10 FPGA. I am using an FT232R based USB Blaster (Not a USB Blaster II, this is an older Altera USB Blaster, Terasic USB Blaster or another clone). Unfortunately when Quartus looks for programming devices it fails if it sees the FT232H first and the FT232H is in use by another program.

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