THE DESIGN CYCLE
■ PHOTO 1. This is the only
Spartan-3A variant that is
available in a pinned
package. Only 144 pins. We
can handle this.
executive view of the Xilinx
programmable output block.
The direct output path looks
very similar to our LUT output
path. The output signal can be
driven by a storage block or
simply routed directly to the
FPGA output pin via the
multiplexer and the three-state
output driver. The tri-state
output path is used to drive the
three-state output driver’s
output into high impedance mode. Note that
programmable storage elements are present in both of the
output paths. To complete the feature set offered by the
Xilinx IOB, every signal path that enters an IOB has an
associated programmable inverter option.
There’s one more basic thing you need to understand
about FPGAs. When the lights go out, so does the
FPGA program. Therefore, if we want our LEDs to blink
every time we power up our FPGA hardware, we need
to include some program storage for the FPGA to boot
from. The FPGA program storage can be in the form of
serially-interfaced (SPI) or parallel-interfaced memory.
We can also get fancy and use a microcontroller to load
an FPGA. We’ll be using the official Xilinx Platform Cable
USB on the FPGA’s JTAG interface to download our
FPGA designs. Using the FPGA JTAG interface for
programming the FPGA also opens up the use of
Xilinx’s JTAG-accessible Platform Flash as our FPGA boot
memory element.
If you had the opportunity to participate in our past
Design Cycle CPLD discussions, you’ll see that we are
using the very same CPLD support equipment (platform
cable USB programmer and ISE WebPACK software) to
load our design logic into Xilinx FPGAs. The only thing
we’re going to change is our programming language. Instead of using ABEL, we’re going to lay
down our FPGA logic with Verilog. Before we start
our Verilog coding, let’s take a quick look at the
hardware target we’ll be working with.
■ PHOTO 2. We can handle this, too. This development
board was intended to demonstrate the capabilities
of the Spartan-3A FPGA family. We’re going to use it
as a launch pad into FPGA space.
to need right now. However, the simple and necessary
things we’re going to need here (like LEDs, pushbuttons,
RS-232 interface circuitry, and an LCD) are included as
subsystems in the kit. All we have to do to use the starter
kit’s resources is map them into our FPGA application.
The mapping is done within ISE WebPACK with the User
Constraints Floorplan I/O utility.
As we progress through our FPGA projects, I am
going to pull selected items from the Spartan-3A kit and
associate them schematically with our Verilog code.
If you want to see what the starter kit looks like as a
whole from a schematic point of view, you can download
the Spartan-3A Starter Kit schematic from the Xilinx
■ PHOTO 3. Although LEDs and switches are easy to
manipulate with most any microcontroller, CPLD, or FPGA,
we must pay attention to where they are best connected to
their hosts. The LEDs are attached to high current FPGA
outputs while the slide switches are connected to FPGA
dedicated input pins. Note the FPGA pin locations I
used to map the LEDs and switches into my Verilog
code are silkscreened in parentheses.
THE XILINX SPARTAN-3A FPGA
Our goal is to build up some home-brew
FPGA hardware using a Xilinx XC3S50A like the
one you see in Photo 1. Since all of the members
of the Spartan-3A family of FPGAs have identical
basic characteristics, we can do our preliminary
FPGA firmware and hardware design work on a
prefabricated Spartan-3A-equipped demo board.
The Xilinx Spartan-3A Starter Kit you see in
Photo 2 has way more stuff on it than we’re going
August 2008 81