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Posted by greener_grass 10/28/2024

Ask HN: How to get into programming ASICs, FPGAs?

It feels like for web, game development, machine learning there are lots of resources. But for specialized chips, not so much.

How does one even get started?

2 points | 2 comments
not_your_vase 10/28/2024|
Step1: Grab an FPGA devboard (for learning get a well supported big name one from AMD/Xilinx or Intel/Altera. Open source FPGA toolchains sound good only as long as you don't have to touch them).

Step2: Follow tutorials to make an LED blink. (There are quite a lot of VHDL and Verilog resources, both as books, and on the internet too. While things evolve, they don't change as fast as for example the JS ecosystem - e.g. most 10 years old VHDL books have perfectly usable and valid information, cover-to-cover)

Step3: Implement your own soft CPU from scratch.

After that you are done. (Add intermediary steps between the last steps, if you wish. Most likely hobby projects.)

Cieric 10/28/2024|
I have yet to really get started learning FPGAs myself, but I hear that [1] nand2tetris is a good resource for learning.

[1] https://www.nand2tetris.org/