Hardware Design For Beginners, By Beginners

When I started working with FPGAs and VHDL, many of the sources assumed knowledge a beginner just wouldn't have. So here's my contribution to the knowledge pool. For beginners from a beginner's perspective.

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First VHDL Project with Vivado for the ZYBO Development Board

This video guides you through the process of creating a new project with the Vivado Design Suite, using VHDL to design a Half-Adder and then program it onto ...

I put this together for my class, Advanced Digital Design, as an introduction to programming FPGA’s using Vivado. Enjoy!

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A Brief Intro and Specs

So, just to clear things up. I hate it when I start reading something that seems really helpful, only to find out it’s talking about the wrong language, board, software, etc.

On that note, I’m working with the ZYBO Development Board from Digilent. It’s basically a smaller, cheaper version of the ZEDBoard. A good chunk of what I talk about, you should be able to apply to the ZEDBoard, but I’m not guaranteeing anything.

For now, the only language I’ll be using for Hardware Design is VHDL. I may venture into Verilog, but I will always state explicitely if I do. Just assume that the default is VHDL.

In terms of software, I’m currently using Vivado 2015.2, which seems to have lost a few features and added others since the last major version.

Finally, I feel I should emphasize this. I’m fairly new to everything related to Hardware design. I’ve got a little over a year under my belt in regards to digital design. So if I make a mistake anywhere, please feel free to let me know. I’m always looking to add to my knowledge, and I hope what I post here will do the same for others!

Thanks and Enjoy!