Hello,

I've been wanting to get my feet wet in FPGA DSP, after many years strictly firmware (C, C++, assembly), including since a good deal of DSP seems to be migrating into FPGA.  And from job offerings, it seems to be a good skill to have, if not required, in many cases ("Xilinx Vivado" experience appears to be popular).

I don't need the most elaborate, but something that is well known for DSP capability, and if it had an audio path, even better.  In the firmware world, dev kits can be had for a few hundred dollars or less, so hoping something analogous can be found for an FPGA kit.

Any recommendations?

Thanks,

Robert

I taught a class in verilog using a PYNQ board.  This one:

https://www.newark.com/tul-corporation/1m1-m000127...

PQNQ-Z2  It is a steal for what's on there.  In the class I just ignored the Zynq and ran the RTL in tethered mode.  That's fairly easy to do.

For a relatively easy to interface audio hat (easy for a pure I2S RTL interface) there is the MAGPI.  These were being thrown away and you can still find them pretty cheap.  Called the AIY Voice Kit (V1).

But you can also boot into the PYNQ environment.  You can also do a simple Zynq sketch and interface to the RTL that way.  I'll point out that all of these options big projects.

Another option for RF is the Adalm Pluto.  I hesitate to mention it because interfacing to the AD9361 from scratch is *very* complicated.  But there are several canned projects you can do.

Awesome, thanks for the recommendations.

Robert

It appears that there is a Beagle Board variant with an FPGA built in: https://www.beagleboard.org/boards/beaglev-fire

I think there are expansion capes for some of the other Beagle Boards which add FPGA functionality.

Out of curiosity, where are you seeing job applications that include FPGA as a requirement?

Thanks, I've worked with Beagle Boards before, so will be checking that out more closely.  

I've typically searched for DSP firmware, or related (Google jobs, etc), which is my background, and many of the positions have FPGA requirements, particularly if RF, Communications, SDR or defense related.  Here's a few examples:

Real-Time Control Engineer @ Axcelis Technologies

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Robert