Customer Reviews

FPGA Prototyping By Verilog Examples: Xilinx Spartan-3 Version

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is perhaps the best introductory Verilog book. It introduces the digital system design methodology and demonstrates the key language concepts and constructs via a series of practical examples, all of them can be physically implemented and tested in an inexpensive Xilinx FPGA board.

There are three parts:
-Part 1 introduces key Verilog language constructs, and systematically shows how to construct combinational circuit, sequential circuit, FSM, and FSMD (FSM with data path) by these constructs.
-Part 2 utilizes the methodologies and techniques of part 1 to design interface and control circuits for an array of I/O modules of the prototyping board, including UART, keyboard, mouse, SRAM, graphic VGA, and textual VGA.
-Part 3 introduces PicoBlaze (an 8-bit soft-core micro-controller) and demonstrates how to integrate a processor to an FPGA design and develop customized I/O.

Pros:
-It utilizes a hands-on approach to introduce Verilog and design methodology.
-It introduces Verilog from hardware's point of view (rather than C's point of view) and emphasizes the key concepts behind HDL.
-The design methodology and coding practice used the in the book are sound and can be applied to larger system.
-It contains an advanced chapter that clarifies several confusing Verilog constructs, such as blocking/non-blocking assignments and signed data type.
-It contains a chapter on soft-core micro-controller and shows the integration of general-purpose processor and customized circuit.

Cons (actually caveats):
-The book is more towards applying Verilog for digital system design rather than the Verilog language. It only covers key Verilog language constructs. You may need another book to learn the complete "language."
-You need to purchase a prototyping board (around $100) to take full advantage of this book.
-The book covers PicoBlaze (a simple 8-bit processor), not its the full-blown big brother, MicroBlaze (a 32-bit processor). The later perhaps is too complicated for an introductory book.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to any student that feels the need to brush up on their Verilog and FPGA skills. The projects are very exciting and interesting. The pong game example was simply AMAZING. During my college career most of my Verilog/FPGA courses were in the first half, the second half was more microcontroller/software engineering oriented. So it was a natural choice to brush up again on HDL fundamentals before going into job interviews. Initially I did a quick read through of the book to get a basic idea of the author's style and methodology. My second pass through the book I coded along and did some of the suggested examples. This book is worth the money and the time. The author is easy to follow and easy to understand. I'll also be purchasing the VHDL book from the same author.

Please be aware that this is not a book on the Verilog language. It's a project based guide to writing efficient and synthesizable code for FPGA implementation. This book is written to be used with the Xilinx Spartan-3 board, so it is vital you have this board or a version that is somewhat compatible.

TL;DR: The author is clear, and easy to understand. The examples are COOL! If you love project based learning then this is the book for you.

As with the VHDL version (see Amazon review), the Kindle version of this book is so full of errors that it is practicaly impossible to read. As the VHDL reviewer said, the code examples are full of typographical errors and missing symbols. The author, PP Chu, has assured me that the Verilog print version has no errors.

I bought this book to become more familiar with Verilog and purchased this text book along with a Spartan 3E Starter Kit. This book thoroughly covered my need to learn Verilog and introduce me to digital hardware design. The book is easy to understand, starts with simple examples and ends up with more sophisticated (and useful) projects.

However, the one area where some additional information is sorely needed is in chapter 2.
'Overview of FPGA and EDA software'. This chapter needs to be expanded significantly and presented more professionally. The Xilinx development environment and modelsim are good pieces of software but a more thorough introduction to it using the authors writing style can avoid some of the pain when setting up the Xilinx environment and dealing with some of the common errors.

But you can't have it all, and given its skillful way of intruducing us to Verilog, this book deserves five stars.

Andreas

I have done logic on and off since my college days (some 20 years ago), but have spent most of my adult life in software. This book, one of three I purchased on the subject, did the best job of bringing me up to speed quickly on FPGA design and Verilog. It went into detail on the difficult to understand topics like the differences in blocking and non-blocking assignments and had great examples on all topics. The back part of the book has some more detailed applications such as UARTS and VGA signal production and these were less interesting to me since they were not related to my project, but in the end the book got me over the hump of being able to write HDL and know what it is going to do.

As mentioned by other reviewers, to get the full benefit of this book you should purchase the development board that it is based around. I wish more texts used the "learn by doing" approach that is employed so effectively in this book. I am grateful that a professor selected it for one of my courses and I expect to use it as a reference for years to come.

I have also been through a number of starter books for HDL and this is definitely the most efficient and effective of them all. Mr. Chu does a great job of balancing the theory and application. The examples are very useful and practical. I have gone through the VHDL version and well, which follows the identical flow of this version. Having both versions is very valuable for language comparisons and understanding the difference between the two.