Instructor: Richard Meitzler

Course Description: We will be learning fundamentals of VHDL with an emphasis on coding for synthesis and writing testbenches for exercising our designs. Each student will complete a number of assignments using a development board based on the Xilinx Spartan 3 FPGA.

Course Syllabus Updates coming soon!!

Final Project

Resources
clock.zip - a simple counter reference demo that runs on the Spartan3 200 board. Note that the .npl file is an older Xilinx project format and will updated to a .ise file when read in to the latest version of ISE.
Xilinx WebPACK free design software used for class
ModelSim XE free simulator used for class
NEXYS2 home page for the class board produced by Digilent. Contains links to schematics and manuals for the board.
Adept programming software for interfacing with the board over USB
Tutorial for NEXSYS2 board courtesy of Doug Wenstrand
Qualis VHDL Quick Reference which will be used as the VHDL "cheat sheet" for the mid-term exam
Xilinx Picoblaze for Spartan3 webpage
The VHDL Cookbook - An online VHDL booklet by Peter Ashenden. It's somewhat dated (claims to only cover about 95% of VHDL-87) but does provide more code examples that you may find helpful.
Programmable Logic Design website. Lot's of news and articles related to FPGAs.
The class Yahoo group: jhueppvhdl

Last Updated: 3 July, 2008