FPGAs 101

Chapter 3. FPGA Development Phases

3.1. Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the basic FPGA architecture and introduce the five FPGA development phases. It is important to understand something about the hardware aspect when developing an FPGA design. By hardware, I mean the FPGA device itself. Many of the older FPGAs allowed only one-time programming (OTP), which means that any design change required replacing the current device. However, most of today's FPGAs are based on static random access memory (SRAM) and can be reprogrammed multiple times. The development process requires the use of several tools to manipulate the design and produce an output file that dictates how the actual FPGA device is connected internally. This ...