Trying to learn and work with FPGAs

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on /r/FPGA

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  • EBAZ4205-Minimum-Board-Operating-Configuration

    EBAZ4205 is Xilinx Zynq based mining board used in Ebang Ebit E9+ bitcoin miner machine.

  • You can buy very cheap boards on AliExpress. For example, here are the ones I used: Very high quality boards are made by Qmtech https://github.com/ChinaQMTECH . You can buy a control board from a bitcoin miner like https://github.com/botnursery/EBAZ4205-Minimum-Board-Operating-Configuration , it is also made very high quality. If you need, don't forget to buy a platform cable as well, then you can do a lot of experiments on these boards.

  • iverilog

    Icarus Verilog

  • The toolchains come with their own simulators, but there are also open source ones you can use. For Verilog you have ICARUS Verilog and Verilator. For VHDL there is GHDL.

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

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  • cocotb

    cocotb, a coroutine based cosimulation library for writing VHDL and Verilog testbenches in Python

  • On the topic of simulation, you don't have to restrict yourself to using Verilog or VHDL to write your test benches. For example, Verilator lets you write them in C++, cocotb lets you use Python, and if you use SpinalHDL you will drive the underlying simulator using Scala.

  • chisel

    Chisel: A Modern Hardware Design Language (by chipsalliance)

  • I'm also a hobbyist. There are a number of alternative HDLs out there, and as hobbyists we can deviate more from the mainstream of (System)Verilog and VHDL if we desire, though you'll still need to be able to read them. In the past I've done Verilog, but lately I've been using SpinalHDL and have been really enjoying it. Its close relative Chisel also makes appearances in the RISC-V space.

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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