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From: Peter Van Epp on 7 Jan 2010 19:55
"rk" <ajrajkumar(a)gmail.com> writes:

>Hi Folks

> I have recently become very interested in FPGA and DSP. Could somebody
>suggest to me a newbee started book and also a related experimental board.

> I would also like to know the differences between the different Virtex
>families like Virtex 2, 4, 5 etc.

>Regards
>RK

Someone has already suggested fpga4fun which has tutorial articles for
newbies on various parts of fpga design. For books I like

http://www.fpgarelated.com/books.php

which has a fine collection of fpga books with reviews all in one place.
I'm considering ordering a couple that I have seen in there. Can't help on DSP
boards as I don't know anything about DSPs but if you elaborate on what you
want to do with the DSP, there are a lot of experienced and helpful people
in this newsgroup. You could do a lot worse than doing a search in the archive
for DSP in comp.arch.fpga for instance.

Peter Van Epp
From: Kati on 7 Jan 2010 20:54
>Hi Folks
>
> I have recently become very interested in FPGA and DSP. Could somebody
>suggest to me a newbee started book and also a related experimental
board.
>
> I would also like to know the differences between the different Virtex
>families like Virtex 2, 4, 5 etc.
>
>Regards
>RK
>
Altera has some very useful (free) online training for newbies, including a
Basics of Programmable Logic course:
http://www.altera.com/education/training/curriculum/fpga/trn-fpga.html.
There are also free DSP courses:
http://www.altera.com/education/training/curriculum/dsp/trn-dsp.html

I work for Altera, so can't give you an unbiased view of Virtex chips =]


From: Peter Alfke on 8 Jan 2010 00:02
On Jan 7, 5:54 pm, "Kati" <kwri...(a)altera.com> wrote:
> >Hi Folks
>
> >   I have recently become very interested in FPGA and DSP. Could somebody
> >suggest to me a newbee started book and also a related experimental
> board.
>
> >   I would also like to know the differences between the different Virtex
> >families like Virtex 2, 4, 5 etc.
>
> >Regards
> >RK
>
Different from Kati, I am more familiar with Xilinx. I worked there
for over 20 years...
"Virtex" is the generic name for the Xilinx FPGA families with highest
performance and most advanced features.
("Spartan" families emphasize lowest cost and lower power, but offer
less performance and fewer features.)
The numbers 2,4,5,6 represent the family evolution over time. Virtex6
is the newest family.
In almost every respect, any newer family is superior to its
predecessor, but members of the previous family are sometimes more
available, and might be better supported, especially with a wider
array of evaluation boards. For any new design, forget Virtex2: it is
really obsolete. Virtex 4,5,and 6 offer better features and more
performance for the money, and better software support. Explore
Virtex6 for its desirable features but also check the availability
(especially of evaluation boards), and compare it to the older, less
advanced but perhaps more widely available Virtex5. Use Virtex4 only
if there is a compelling reason, and when you have no need for the
better performance and more advanced features of the younger
families.
The basic structures of these families are very similar, if you are
familiar with one you can easily move to another.
For an overview of their capabilities, there are popular "User Guide
Lite" for Virtex5 and Virtex6 available on the web.
( www.pldesignline.com/howto/most_popular/ ).
Peter Alfke
From: Peter Alfke on 8 Jan 2010 00:47
On Jan 7, 9:02 pm, Peter Alfke <al...(a)sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Jan 7, 5:54 pm, "Kati" <kwri...(a)altera.com> wrote:> >Hi Folks
>
> > >   I have recently become very interested in FPGA and DSP. Could somebody
> > >suggest to me a newbee started book and also a related experimental
> > board.
>
> > >   I would also like to know the differences between the different Virtex
> > >families like Virtex 2, 4, 5 etc.
>
> > >Regards
> > >RK
>
> Different from Kati, I am more familiar with Xilinx. I worked there
> for over 20 years...
> "Virtex" is the generic name for the Xilinx FPGA families with highest
> performance and most advanced features.
> ("Spartan" families emphasize lowest cost and lower power, but offer
> less performance and fewer features.)
> The numbers 2,4,5,6 represent the family evolution over time. Virtex6
> is the newest family.
> In almost every respect, any newer family is superior to its
> predecessor, but members of the previous family are sometimes more
> available, and might be better supported, especially with a wider
> array of evaluation boards. For any new design, forget Virtex2: it is
> really obsolete. Virtex 4,5,and 6 offer better features and more
> performance for the money, and better software support. Explore
> Virtex6 for its desirable features but also check the availability
> (especially of evaluation boards), and compare it to the older, less
> advanced but perhaps more widely available Virtex5. Use Virtex4 only
> if there is a compelling reason, and when you have no need for the
> better performance and more advanced features of the younger
> families.
> The basic structures of these families are very similar, if you are
> familiar with one you can easily move to another.
> For an overview of their capabilities, there are popular "User Guide
> Lite" for Virtex5 and Virtex6 available on the web.
> (  www.pldesignline.com/howto/most_popular/   ).
> Peter Alfke

make that:
http://www.pldesignline.com/howto/most_popular/
From: John Adair on 8 Jan 2010 02:00
There are not many linked books and boards that I have seen but I am
not a DSP specialist so there might be something I don't know
about.The problem for authors is the family, and the related
development boards, turnover rate. Many boards effectively only have
lifetime of aa couple of years although some vendors like ourselves
supply them as OEM and COTS solutions giving a reason to extend board
product lifetimes to 5,10 or 20 years. What materials I have seen are
things like university course materials that typically use a usually a
lower end board typically based on Spartan or Cyclone parts. You can
find some of these materials by googling for something like FPGA DSP.

The Virtex family general as said elsewhere you get more for your
money going from Virtex (1) to now Virtex-6. In the later families the
SX variants are more DSP orientated and have more ram and multiplier
blocks the main resources generally needed. Depending on your
application don't rule out the lower stuff as well. Some of the recent
Spartan families are quite good in the mid-end DSP market and
certainly can beat a DSP processor approach for performance.

Some useful bits and pieces can be found on our website at
http://www.enterpoint.co.uk/techitips/techitips.html.

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.


On 7 Jan, 12:38, "rk" <ajrajku...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Folks
>
>    I have recently become very interested in FPGA and DSP. Could somebody
> suggest to me a newbee started book and also a related experimental board..
>
>    I would also like to know the differences between the different Virtex
> families like Virtex 2, 4, 5 etc.
>
> Regards
> RK

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