Introduction to Digital Design Using Digilent FPGA Boards: Block Diagram / VHDL Examples

This book assumes no previous knowledge of digital design. We use 30 examples to show you how to get started designing digital circuits that you can implement on a Xilinx Spartan3E FPGA using either the Digilent BASYS™ system board that can be purchased from www.digilentinc.com or the Digilent Nexys-2 board. We will use Active-HDL from Aldec to design, simulate, synthesize, and implement the digital designs. A free student edition of Active-HDL is available from Aldec, Inc. (www.aldec.com). To synthesize your designs to a Spartan3E FPGA you will need to download the free Vivado WebPACK from Xilinx, Inc. (www.xilinx.com). The Xilinx synthesis tools are called from within the Aldec Active-HDL integrated GUI. A more complete book called Digital Design Using Digilent FPGA Boards – VHDL / Active-HDL Edition is also available from LBE Books (www.lbebooks.com). This more comprehensive book contains over 75 examples including examples of using the VGA and PS/2 ports. Similar books that use Verilog are also available from LBE Books.