Question

I would like to get an FPGA development board with the goal to emulate a CD-ROM drive.
My questions are:

• Is there any fpga that allows writing code in C/C++ and not VHDL?
• If you had to recommend a board , which one would that be ?
• Which book would you recommend to buy ?
• Is there anything else that i should know before going further ?

Answer 1

A) Well directly writing C++ code does not make sense, however you can emulate a processor and write C/C++ to it. I have done this. I would recommend a starting kit from ALTERA don’t buy something really expensive for starters.

B) http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/altera/kit-cyc2-2C20N.html This is pretty nice for example. I have implemented a dsp on it, using C.

Altera has the NIOS CPU which you can implement. It is not the easiest thing to do. You will need at least basic VHDL knowledge to do this.

C) http://www.amazon.com/Designing-FPGAs-CPLDs-Bob-Zeidman/dp/1578201128 covers the basics.

D) You should know digital architectures. C/C++ is way different than VHDL and you will not be able to harvest the true power of FPGA’s until you know how the core components work. Adders, ALU’s, MUX, DEMUX, MULTIPLIERS etc are integral parts of any digital circuit. You need to know how you can combine them in order to parallelize your solution and exploit the hardware.