Meetup/FPGA

FPGA discussion and study group since H2 2025.

Place and Time

Wednesday nights upstairs at the front tables.

Links

Meeting Notes: https://pad.riseup.net/p/nb-meetup-fpga

FAQ

Is FPGA hardware or software?

Yes. FPGA is fundamentally hardware design (electronics) implemented using a form of coding (Hardware Description Languages - HDLs), blurring lines between traditional software and hardware engineering; you describe digital circuits (like gates, registers) in code (VHDL/Verilog) that gets mapped onto reconfigurable hardware, so understanding digital electronics is crucial for effective FPGA development, not just software programming.

• It's Hardware (Electronics)
  • Reconfigurable Hardware: An FPGA is a physical chip with an array of programmable logic blocks and interconnects, meaning you're configuring actual hardware, not just running software instructions on a fixed processor.
  • Describing Circuits: You're not writing sequential code for a CPU; you're describing parallel hardware structures (like adders, multiplexers, memory) that exist simultaneously.
• Digital Logic: Concepts like timing, signals, clocks, and logic gates are fundamental to understanding how the hardware operates.
• It Uses Code (Programming)
  • Hardware Description Languages (HDLs): You use languages like Verilog or VHDL to describe the desired digital circuit.
  • Software-like Flow: The design-compile-test cycle feels like software development, allowing for rapid iteration, but the output configures hardware.
  • High-Level Synthesis (HLS): Some tools allow using C/C++ for HLS, generating HDL from higher-level descriptions, but this still maps to hardware.
• It's both, but rooted in electronics: While you code, you're creating hardware, so strong digital electronics knowledge (logic, timing, signals) is essential for successful FPGA design. You are designing a custom piece of hardware, not writing software for existing hardware.