Customer Reviews

Design Recipes for FPGAs: Using Verilog and VHDL

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
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The book provides decent explanations of common building blocks oft needed in FPGA designs. The only annoyance is that the book does not always provide full source listing, instead you must rely on the incomplete CD. If you happen to lose the CD as I did then you're out of luck as the code is not available on either the publisher or author's web sites.

Design Recipies for FPGAs is a very good high-level description of some simple to advanced applications of FPGAs, and best for anyone starting into FPGA design. There is some light coverage of VHDL, FPGA technology, and descriptions of several applications in this book. Looking at the title though, and even the table of contents, I expected a little less discussion of VHDL (etc) and a lot more detail on the applications. When I think of a "recipe", I think of a detailed process of putting something together. The applications described here are mostly overviews. The VGA adapter for example caught my eye - as I have recently had interest in designing one for a project I was working on. I found a good overview of VGA controllers, and a general description of how they work, but was looking for something a bit more meaty; say, block diagrams with samaple code, information on how to interface to some of the TFT panels, interfacing to alternate display types, detailed suggestinos and examples of incorporating on-chip memory, etc. Basically a good comprehensive parallel discussion of the hardware and code involved to get graphics onto a screen with code and diagrams that can be adapted per application.

Overall, the book is a good one. There are some very good ideas in there. I would recommend this book highly to an entry level designer, but maybe not to a seasoned engineer looking for drop-in solutions. For the more experienced with FPGAs, it may serve well a brush-up reference and an idea generator, but it will only get you so far - the rest is up to you.

I really like this book and the way it is put together. However it has a ton of typos and the CD only contains portions of the files in the book. Once he gets the errors fixed I would give it 4 or 5 stars.