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Brand new to FPGA


Capnfrost

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Hello everyone,

 

I am currently an undergraduate studying Biomedical Engineering. As part of my university's honors program I am required to do a thesis. The mentor I have chosen has tasked me to write lab assignments that use the Basys 3 to use in a class about digital circuits. I know nothing about this piece of technology and due to the relative newness of it I am having trouble finding existing projects that I could use as well as how to write programs for it. He told me that he wanted to use it to implement various logic functions such as AND gates and OR gates. From what I can tell it can be used for these functions but I just have no idea where to start. I know this might seem like very basic information to most of you but I have zero experience with FPGAs and any advice will help. Thanks in advance and can't wait to learn more!

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Hi!
 
7I too have a Basys3, so can help work with you if required.
 
In theory it is pretty simple.
 
0. Download, Install and license Xilinx's Vivado - you will need it for step 2.
 
1. Decide on the aim/goal of the design - which might just be "make LED0 show SW1 AND SW0, and LED1 show SW0 or SW1". You need a concise focused problem statement if you are going to get anywhere quick - saying "I want to demonstrate Boolean Logic" is a bit too wishy-washy.
 
2. Create a new project with the correct settings for the board.
 
3. Build a constraints file (.xdc), that defines where the connections to the chip will be, and how they act. Digilent have some Master Constraints files on their product pages that you can use as a basis.
 
4. Then create one or a VHDL or Verilog file, that takes the signals and processes them as desired. A complex design might need more than one file, as you split the design into modules.
 
5. Optional step - create a test bench module, and then verify the design in simulation
 
6. Launch the "Generate Bitstream" process, and fix up any errors
 
7. Use the Hardware Manager to download the bitstream to the device, and play with it.
 
If using VHDL, this link might prove useful http://hamsterworks.co.nz/mediawiki/index.php/Module_3- just remember it is using a different development board and the older ISE toolset, so the step by step instructions are not applicable.
 
PS. If you post a followup, can you make it a new topic in the FPGA section? It's no longer an introduction :)
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I have already figured out how to do the starting project. I was mostly wondering how to make my own files so that logic functions could be performed using the Basys 3. Maybe something like if switch one and two are both on then LED 3 turns on and so forth. If I can figure out how to do something like that I think that I could figure out the rest. 

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