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Well that's a problem, I don't know what exactly I can do with an FPGA, I've read that you can program logic blocks in it and cores like coldfire 1.
So, can I put for example a couple of demultiplexers, latches, counters and logic gates?
Can I put the logic circuit that I'm using to interface my microcontroller with a LCD?
What kind of knowledge is necessary to use FPGAs?
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Given that you have a background in microcontrollers, its probably best to start off with FPGA-based microcontrollers. The Altera NIOS II processor is a microcontroller core that you can implement with varying levels of performance (and logic usage), and then add peripherals to its memory map. These peripherals are identical to the digital peripherals you'll find in a microcontroller, eg., timers, GPIOs, etc. What you will not find is analog functions, like DACs and ADCs (ok, that's not quite true as Microsemi has some parts, but lets stick to Altera here).
You should decide how much money you want to spend, then look at the Altera evaluation boards, and look at the Terasic web site (they build the university program boards). Look at some of the example designs targeting the NIOS processor, eg. they generally have a name like My First NIOS tutorial.
Once you have your board, and are running software on a NIOS core that blinks an LED using the pre-canned NIOS GPIO peripheral (Avalon-MM slave PIO), you can then move onto creating your own custom logic to attach to the NIOS bus, and then as you learn more you can replace the NIOS processor too.
When you get stuck, just ask questions here, there's lots of people to give you advice.
Cheers,
Dave
Honored Contributor
