Forum Discussion
Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
15 years agoYou would need design software called Quartus II or the older MaxPlus II to create a design for the FPGA. The design software compiles a hardware design by synthesizing the logic and performing place and route to map it to the various resources in the device. If this board was a development kit then it probably came with design files already ready to be compiled but if not then you'll have to design the hardware yourself using Verilog/VHDL/AHDL/schematic entry.
To compare this to a GPU it would be like you having to write your own OpenCL/CUDA/brooke software to program the shader codes of the GPU. The difference between this and an FPGA is that the FPGA doesn't even have the specialized hardware to start with so you have to design that part or get it elsewhere. So to find out if there are already design files ready for that board you'll need to determine what board it is so that you know which website to visit in order to find the files (assuming they are still posted). I would imagine the board manufacture name is on the silkscreen somewhere. For more details about FPGA technology and programming here is wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/field-programmable_gate_array