New Joiner

[Altera_Forum]

Hi, 

I am new to Altera and FPGA, but I am very keen to learn.  I have an Altera DE2-70 which I recently bought. I have installed QuartusII on Linux (with the next challenge of getting things like USB Blaster working) and am now looking for some very simple project ideas and or any links to some good information for beginners.   Doing the Google trawl does yield results, however the information largely varies. So I thought I'd start here and see what I can glean.  Vince.

[Altera_Forum]

In order to gain the most from this process, you should generate a series of topics you desire to better understand and then post them. 

 Currently your posting is much to general in nature to give others a feel for where to start helping you.  There are a few posts on getting the USB Blaster to work on that OS I believe.  You might also gogle search a few university sites as there are quite a few that offer on line courses information to help you along.  Altera also offers some very good free online training that can help you with some example work as well.  cheers.

[Altera_Forum]

The online tutorials are super helpful, highly recommended

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  In order to gain the most from this process, you should generate a series of topics you desire to better understand and then post them.  Currently your posting is much to general in nature to give others a feel for where to start helping you.  There are a few posts on getting the USB Blaster to work on that OS I believe.  You might also gogle search a few university sites as there are quite a few that offer on line courses information to help you along.  Altera also offers some very good free online training that can help you with some example work as well.  cheers.  --- Quote End ---    Thanks for responding - I will start to post topics of interest.  But my worry is whether I need to have a background in electronics to be able to start...  - Clocks - rising/falling edges - Signals - LUTs - Muxs - Memory Maps - Controllers - VHDL - etc

[Altera_Forum]

--- Quote Start ---  The online tutorials are super helpful, highly recommended  --- Quote End ---    Thanks czeh - I will look at the tutorials too.

[Altera_Forum]

Well i guess first you need to design some thing . 

I dont know about your knowledge in design but i think if you havnt designed anything in vhdl, verilog or system verilog then keep your device aside for some time and try out some basic designs like stop watch, arbiters etc. If you are good with design skills then download i guess learn constraining your designs with sdc and some good knowledge about the tool through the .qpf file. learn how to give constraints in sdc like clock generation,set input and output delays and the false paths. The information to all this is on altera's site and there are some links in the forum where these topics have been discussed just search with some keywords you will get many. Best of luck :)

[Altera_Forum]

Thanks very much Ashish... I definitely need to walk before I can run. So I will starting out by just turning the less on the board on and off, implementing a timer, etc.

[Altera_Forum]

yes first learn what a design implements and how you can optimize it. Designs implemented on fpga face many problems like timing,area and many more. 

You need to know what you are implementing to really have fun working with fpga's and its a large domain and i can say i only know some few parts of it :)

[Altera_Forum]

Oddly enough, for the things that go on inside an FPGA, you do not need to know much about electronics (it helps - or maybe it gets in the way - I will leave that debate to another time & place - and I have a Masters Degree in EE). 

 That said - what you do ned to develop is a good sense of logic, how things in one 'state' combined with some new information (inputs) lead to another 'state', and the resulting 'states' outputs.  All the rest of it is just a build up from there.  The place where an understanding about electronics comes in is at the PIN level interface of the FPGA, where you have to have certain voltages (high or low) at the appropraite levels (voltage) to make the external components behave correctly. And they have to get there at the right time before the external device 'expects' or 'take a picture of them' (like a photograph) so that you do not get a 'smeared image' of them.  Have fun, let's see what others post in terms of learning the terms you have listed, keep us posted as you head along the journey.