New Verilog/Quartus user

Question

Hi everyone, I'm new to verilog/FPGA boards. I took a course last semester on them and found them pretty interesting. I didn't learn quite as much so I'm looking for two things.

First of all, where can I learn Verilog? All I know is how to declare input and output regs and wires and use if/else statements. Are there any good books or sites I can look at?

Secondly, I won't be able to use actual FPGA boards for some time. During classes we used Altera DE2 boards with Quartus II Subscription Edition. I have Quartus Web Edition on my own computer. Is there a way to simulate my Verilog with this edition? I looked online and found some stuff about waveforms, but I can't find that option when I try to create a new file.

Thanks!

(And if this isn't in the right section, please move it. I thought it was too basic for the other sections and I saw some beginner posts in here so I went for it.)

altera_forum · Answer

There are a lot of good books on Verilog. The book "digital design (verilog) (http://www.amazon.com/digital-design-verilog-embedded-approach/dp/0123695279/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2)" by Peter Ashenden is a good book.

As a simulator you can use modelsim (https://www.altera.com/download/software/modelsim-starter/11.1). The Altera version can be downloaded from the Altera web-pages.

altera_forum · Answer

Thanks, I'll try to get my hands on a copy of that book.

I downloaded the simulator and set in Quartus to run it after compilation. I'm not really sure how to use it though, I've only done things on DE2 boards... What am I supposed to see, and are there any guides to using the simulator?

altera_forum · Answer

Once you get through that book I also recommend reading this:

http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/qts/qts_qii51007.pdf

This will give you an idea of how to structure your HDL to best map into an FPGA.

Another thing I recommend you pay special attention to are the differences between synthesizable and simulation code. What you write in say a simulation testbench may not necessary work in real hardware. So if you learn the difference early on you won't get into the pitfalls that others seem to find themselves in.

Quartus also has a templates menu option under the 'edit' menu that you can take a look at too for small examples of things like coding RAMs/ROMs, flip flops, math operators, statemachines, etc...

altera_forum · Answer

visit here: http://www.altera.com/literature/lit-qts.jsp?gsa_pos=1&amp;wt.oss_r=1&amp;wt.oss=quartus    You could find something worth reading.

altera_forum · Answer

You may also want to purchase an inexpensive FPGA dev kit.

I think the Terasic DE0-Nano Development Board looks like a good kit for the price. If you have more to invest then go for Terasic DE2-115 Development Board and you'll get valuable transceiver experience that a lot of employers are looking for. Try to see if you can get the academic pricing.

Best of luck!

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