FPGA design using the Papilio 500
I recently bought a Papilio 500 FPGA. This has a Xilinx Xc3S500 Spartan 3E FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) on board.
The FPGA can pack a load of circuitry without having to wire anything except to the outside world! According to Mike Field the equivalent 74 series board area that would be equivalent to the XC3S100 FPGA (5x less than the Papilio 500) is 4.0m x 7.2m approximately!
The 2 principal and free books I used to get going are:
1. Introducing the Spartan 3E FPGA and VHDL by Mike field (aka Hamster)
2. Free Range VHDL by Bryan Mealy, Fabrizio Tappero
The FPGA can pack a load of circuitry without having to wire anything except to the outside world! According to Mike Field the equivalent 74 series board area that would be equivalent to the XC3S100 FPGA (5x less than the Papilio 500) is 4.0m x 7.2m approximately!
The 2 principal and free books I used to get going are:
1. Introducing the Spartan 3E FPGA and VHDL by Mike field (aka Hamster)
2. Free Range VHDL by Bryan Mealy, Fabrizio Tappero