Customer Reviews

FPGAs 101: Everything you need to know to get started

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1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have to agree with the others here. This book is far from "everything you need to know" and is more a random collection of the author's thoughts. It goes into too much detail in some areas and not nearly enough in others.

Newnes, many years ago, turned out mostly worthwhile books from well respected authors. But in the last several years they seem more focused on QUANTITY over QUALITY. They keep churning out new books, but almost all of them fit into one of these two categories:

- A re-hash of previously published content. Just look at their "World Class", "Know It All" and "Ultimate" series for examples. Little if anything new is in these books. They just cut and paste from previously published material--some of it very out of date. So you buy an expensive book with a current copyright, and you get 5+ year old recycled content. 5 years is forever for most of the topics being covered.

- Poorly written, poorly edited, rushed material from relatively unknown authors or authors writing outside their main area of expertise. There are of often many errors and ommissions, and it seems the priority is more on getting the book on the shelves rather than having a high quality book.

This book is in the second category. Like the other reviewer said, the covers are well done, but what's between them is seriously lacking. I would suggest Newnes spend some of their marketing budget on better editing and, in some cases, better authors.

My peers increasingly feel the same way. Many don't even bother to check out the latest Newnes releases, however appealing the titles might be, because they've purchased too many useless Newnes books in the last few years. This is another one of those books. Newnes is gradually destroying their brand and reputation.

The back page is written really well, but the content is not half as good. It's skimpy and confusing. There are segments of codes scattered throughout the book. The author gives you an impression that the tutorials will provide the codes for the reader to download and try, but there is nowhere on the internet that the codes were available. Following the book, I went to the [...] and found the book companions site [...]. Well, this book is not even on the list. I wish the author and the publisher be more responsible.

When you read this book, you end up wasting your time on the numerous repetitions (often of common sense advices).

Only one example of FPGA design, with the listing filling pages with code that is nearly cut/paste with different values.

Too many useless screenshots (what is the point in displaying 3-4 runs of the tool with/without error, when you've only one line of the screenshot that changes ?) sometimes, screenshots are following to the point that the last one refers to 5-6 pages ago.

If you want to learn about FPGA, forget about this book... there is nearly nothing about the actual langage and I'm not even sure that the only example is good coding practice (if I compare with codes from OpenCores for example)

I really hate to give such a negative review. You have to admire a person taking the risk of writing a book. However, it is obvious that either:

1. The other has done very little FPGA programming or
2. The author just threw together the book without any regard for accuracy.

I have a feeling it is a little of both. I wish there was a lower score than one star for this book. I believe that most people will find this book more harmful than helpful.

While reading the book, I have found numerous errors in the example snippits. For example, both examples for the shift register (listing 2-8 and 2-9) will simply not work. In listing 2-8, it appears the author is attempting to create a left shift register. However, during the left_shift process the code overwrites the contents of each bit before shifting. Of course this will result in filling the register with copies of the shift data. Clearly instead of the code being this:

Internal_shifted_data_out(0) <= shift_data;
Internal_shifted_data_out(1) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(0);
Internal_shifted_data_out(2) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(1);
Internal_shifted_data_out(3) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(2);
Internal_shifted_data_out(4) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(3);
Internal_shifted_data_out(5) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(4);

it should be this:

Internal_shifted_data_out(5) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(4);
Internal_shifted_data_out(4) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(3);
Internal_shifted_data_out(3) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(2);
Internal_shifted_data_out(2) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(1);
Internal_shifted_data_out(1) <= Internal_shifted_data_out(0);
Internal_shifted_data_out(0) <= shift_data;

Simulation of the two different codes verifies this problem.

There are numerous other errors scattered throughout the book. I would recommend not buying this book and just getting more accurate information available from the numerous websites. If you decide to get this book, I would bear in mind that most of the examples have significant bugs.

I do feel really bad about giving such a poor review but this book really isn't worth the paper it was printed on.