First book to focus exclusively and comprehensively on FPGA use in embedded designsworld-renowned best-selling author
will help engineers get familiar and succeed with this new technology by providing much-needed advice on choosing the right FPGA for any design project
Reviews
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The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs describes not only everything you need to know to start designing FPGAs, but also how the art came to be in its current state...Unlike many in the EDA industry, Maxfield doesn't forget that chips go on boards: One chapter looks at PCB considerations of FPGA Design...I must admit that when I first saw the book, I imagined reading it would be something of a slog as so many technical books are. Upon opening the book, I was delighted to discover that Maxfield's writing style actually makes reading the book more of a romp in the part. There are portions of the book that I intended to just scan but found myself sucked into reading in full...The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs will be a great source of knowledge to the FPGA newcomer. It will also provide new insights and broaden the veteran designer's knowledge of the field. But most of all it is a fun and engaging read for anyone for whom electronics design is more than a 9-to-5 job. It is a good buy at the $49.95 list price - PRINTED CIRCUIT DESIGN & MANUFACTURE JULY 2004
If you've never read any books written by Clive 'Max' Maxfield, then you're in for a treat. True to form, his latest book on FPGAs is enjoyable to read. Yet it's also rich in the technical details that any modern designer would need...He covers all of the issues that anyone working with FPGAs or thinking about moving to them would need to know...As with most of Max's work, this book's appendix is a treasure trove of background tutorials...While this book is well suited for young engineers - anyone with less than the prerequisite five years in FPGA or ASIC design - it also offers many topics that will interest the experienced designer - Wireless Systems Design, August 2004
Description
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...a must-read book for those designers who either want an introduction to designing with FPGAs or need to broaden their understanding of the EDA tools available for such applications. Maxfield writes in a easy-to-read style, and provides insightful and diverse information for designers and curious readers alike. The author has never forgotten his designer roots, and the book is full of examples and chapters dedicated to such applications as gigabit transceivers, linear-feedback-shift registers, and integration of third-party cores. -- EDN, 5/21/2004
Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are devices that provide a fast, low-cost way for embedded system designers to customize products and deliver new versions with upgraded features, because they can handle very complicated functions, and be reconfigured an infinite number of times. FPGAs have recently become much faster and more powerful, making them suitable for use with a wide range of embedded products. This has created a rapidly expanding market in the embedded world as products migrate to these flexible parts, and a need for designers to educate themselves quickly about working with FPGAs - which they can do with this book.
Clive 'Max' Maxfield is a bestselling author and engineer with a large following in the electronic design automation (EDA)and embedded systems industry. In this comprehensive book, he covers all the issues of interest to designers working with, or contemplating a move to, FPGAs in their product designs. While other books cover fragments of FPGA technology or applications this is the first to focus exclusively and comprehensively on FPGA use for embedded systems.
Contents
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Introductio; Fundamental Concepts; The Origin of FPGAs; Alternative FPGA Architectures; Programming (Configuring) an FPGA; Who Are All the Players?; FPGA Versus ASIC; HDL-Based Design Flows; Silicon Virtual Prototyping; C/C++ etc.-Based Design Flows;
DSP-Based Design Flows; Embedded Processor-Based; Modular and Incremental Design; High-Speed Design and Other PCB Considerations; Observing Internal Nodes in an FPGA; Intellectual Property; Migrating ASIC Designs to FPGAs and Vice Versa; Simulation, Synthesis, Verification, etc.; Choosing the Right Device; Gigabit Transceivers; Reconfigurable Computing; Creating an Open-Source-Based
Design Flow; Future FPGA Developments; Appendix A:
Signal Integrity 101;Capacitive and inductive coupling(crosstalk), Chip-level effects, Board-level effects, The evolution of delay specifications; Appendix B: Deep-Submicron Delay Effects 101, A potpourri of definitions, Alternative interconnect models, DSM delay effects
Summary, The Ouroboras, Many-to-one implementations; Appendix C: Linear Feedback Shift Registers 101, More taps than you know what to do with, Seeding an LFSR, FIFO applications, Modifying LFSRs to sequence 2n values, Accessing the previous value, Encryption and decryption applications,
Cyclic redundancy check applications.
Data compression applications
Built-in self-test applications
Pseudorandom-number-generation applications
Last but not least
Glossary
About the Author
Index
Readership: Electronics design engineers and engineering managers, ASIC Designers moving to FPGAs, electrical and computer engineering students, sales and marketing professionals in the electronic design arena
