Make: FPGAs: Turning Software into Hardware with Eight Fun and Easy DIY Projects

What is FPGA use for? If you figure it out, it takes effect to be useful but it's just bunch of beginner's technologies before you can do so.In my opinion, it's just ok for beginner like me. I didn't know what is even FPGA.Another books are explaining too complicate to get in for the first time?

Arrived on time and as promised.

Great book, though it doesnt cover newer fpga architectures like the Zynq or Vivado it does a great job of explaining how to get started and has some fun projects.Cons: hasn't been proofread completely and some of the concepts arent connected well. You may have to supplement with youtube to get the most out of it.

This book has some good information about some Xilinx FPGAs, but it needs some serious editing. I have found several typos, the author is apparently confused assumptions about the reader so elementary terms he defines while other more advanced terms are assumed.There is some good information, it is just not well organized.I'd like the author to produce a revision with the help of a good editor and someone who the author considers the ideal reader to help better organize the information. I'd be glad to help.

Great

This book uses multiple boards for illustration, and does not go beyond the examples which come with the boards. I promptly return the book. If you want to learn Verilog, I would recommend "Advanced Chip Design, Practical Examples in Verilog" instead. Or even free articles like this one: [...]. For FPGA boards, this Xilinx board comes with necessary (English) docs: XC6SLX9 Starter Board,Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA (find it on flea bay).

Love it

I bought this book buy mistake while looking for FPGA books. Think I hit one click buy. Anyway it was in my library and I needed some FPGA info so I checked it out. I got about 20% in according to kindle and didn't see one line of code. But I did see many glaring errors.The first project is to blink a couple LEDS using a couple outputs from a binary counter. He uses two 16 bit counters cascaded together. But he talks about how counters are cascaded with their count enable lines. That is completely wrong. Counters are cascaded with their carry ins and outs. He also has you connect the counter output buses together. His goal is to create a 32 bit bus from two 16 bit buses but he has both buses set to [0:15] which would short the outputs together and cause bad things to happen including damaging the hardware. Fortunately the compiler would complain before allowing that. It was at that point that I stopped reading and got the refund.I'm experienced enough with the subject matter to spot these issues but this book is geared toward a beginner and unfortunately a beginner would have nothing but problems trying to follow this book. On top of that it's not even good for learning as it's just a hand holding experience guiding you through a project with very little explanation or completely wrong explanation as in the case of the counters. To be fair I didn't get that far in so maybe it improves but I encountered so many typos and errors that I didn't see any reason to continue as it was obvious it wasn't proof read or edited or many of these errors would have been found. I'm sure the author knows the difference between a counters enable and carry lines and just made a mistake but that doesn't excuse releasing the book in this state.This book reminds me of the old computer adage, 'Garbage in, garbage out'. If you try to follow the garbage in the author is pushing all you'll get out is garbage and maybe some smoke.Make is really tarnishing their brand by attaching it to low quality junk like this.

Dieses Buch ist in englischer Sprache verfasst. Da ich Englisch nur rudimentär verstehe und beherrsche, hatt ich erst meine Bedenken. Aber das Buch ist reativ gut verständlich, auch mit einfachen Englisch-Kenntnissen. Insgeamt würde ich mir mehr solche Bücher in deutscher Sprache wünschen. Die meisten Bücher sind heutzutage fast nur noch als "populärwissentschaftlich" einzustufen.Dieses Buch bietet einen einfachen und schnellen Einstieg in digitaler Logik und konnt aber relativ schnell zum eigentlichen Thema FGPA. Man erhält einen guten, grundsteinlegenden Einstieg in die Thematik der FPGA. Allerdings benötigt man dann weiterführende Literatur.

Not as good as I'd hoped.It starts off well enough, but the content is all over the place - there's a section where the author explains how to get the free Xilinx tools, but misses some important details. In the simulation section there's a whole load about how important simulation and test benches are, but no real detail on how to write one. The depth varies from an explanation of how an LED works like a switch (really?) but with the diagram wrong, to the dark art of timing closure. A lot of it is walk through of someone else's website. Frankly, don't buy this book - go and download mike field's free guide at hamster works wiki. It's a lot better!I had hoped for better from Make.

Ich find das Buch gut, es ist einfach geschrieben und geht auf den Punkt. Was ich aber wirklich kritisieren muss ist, das der Autor erwartet das man sich für 800€ FPGA Platinen kaufen muss. Die ersten 3 Kapitel das eine.. Im 4. aufeinmal ein anderes und im 5. auf einmal ein drittes.Das ist schade. Ich hätte mir gewünscht das es wie folgt wäre: Hier ist das Buch, hier ist die Platine die du dir kaufst und wir ackern alle Projekte mit der Platine durch.Denn wie er schon am Anfang schriebt: Am Ende ist es egal welche Platine man hat. -> Na bitte. Dann bleib doch bei einer.Das sieht man schön an dem Kapitel CPU. Er nimmt eine neue günstige Platine, die auf einmal nicht mehr die 100Mhz (die wir in den Kapiteln vorher mit der ersten Platine super machen konnten) kann sondern nur noch 25mhz oder so. Also erklärt er dann in dem Kapitel wie er die CPU Core die er woanders runtergeladen hat so anpasst das es auf der Karte geht.Was ich nun persönlich schade finde, denn eigentlich hätte ich gedacht in dem Kapitel erklärt er wie man CPUs auf der FPGA Plattform designt, modeliert und grob erklärt. Somit beschränkte sich das Kapitel auf: Bitte ändere das das es läuft, ändere das das es läuft etc. Themen die mich interessiert hätten: Speicheranbindung, Taktrate, Befehlsspeicher.. Alles leider nicht vorhanden.