The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs

Clive "Max" Maxfield received a BS in Control Engineering from Sheffield Polytechnic, England in 1980. He began his career as a mainframe CPU designer for International Computers Limited (ICL) in Manchester, England. Max now finds himself a member of the technical staff (MTS) at Intergraph Electronics, Huntsville, Alabama. Max is the author of dozens of articles and papers appearing in magazines and at technical conferences around the world. Max's main area of interest are currently focused in the analog, digital, and mixed-signal simulation of integrated circuits and multichip modules.

• Introductio; Fundamental Concepts; The Origin of FPGAs; Alternative FPGA Architectures; Programming (Configuring) an FPGA; Who Are All the Players?; FPGA Versus ASIC; HDL-Based Design Flows; Silicon Virtual Prototyping; C/C++ etc.–Based Design Flows;DSP-Based Design Flows; Embedded Processor-Based; Modular and Incremental Design; High-Speed Design and Other PCB Considerations; Observing Internal Nodes in an FPGA; Intellectual Property; Migrating ASIC Designs to FPGAs and Vice Versa; Simulation, Synthesis, Verification, etc.; Choosing the Right Device; Gigabit Transceivers; Reconfigurable Computing; Creating an Open-Source-BasedDesign Flow; Future FPGA Developments; Appendix A:Signal Integrity 101;Capacitive and inductive coupling(crosstalk), Chip-level effects, Board-level effects, The evolution of delay specifications; Appendix B: Deep-Submicron Delay Effects 101, A potpourri of definitions, Alternative interconnect models, DSM delay effectsSummary, The Ouroboras, Many-to-one implementations; Appendix C: Linear Feedback Shift Registers 101, More taps than you know what to do with, Seeding an LFSR, FIFO applications, Modifying LFSRs to sequence 2n values, Accessing the previous value, Encryption and decryption applications,Cyclic redundancy check applications.

"The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs describes not only everything you need to know to start designing FPGAs, but also how the art came to be in its current state...Unlike many in the EDA industry, Maxfield doesn't forget that chips go on boards: One chapter looks at PCB considerations of FPGA Design...I must admit that when I first saw the book, I imagined reading it would be something of a slog as so many technical books are. Upon opening the book, I was delighted to discover that Maxfield's writing style actually makes reading the book more of a romp in the part. There are portions of the book that I intended to just scan but found myself sucked into reading in full...The Design Warrior's Guide to FPGAs will be a great source of knowledge to the FPGA newcomer. It will also provide new insights and broaden the veteran designer's knowledge of the field. But most of all it is a fun and engaging read for anyone for whom electronics design is more than a 9-to-5 job.If you've never read any books written by Clive "Max" Maxfield, then you're in for a treat. True to form, his latest book on FPGAs is enjoyable to read. Yet it's also rich in the technical details that any modern designer would need...He covers all of the issues that anyone working with FPGAs or thinking about moving to them would need to know...As with most of Max's work, this book's appendix is a treasure trove of background tutorials...While this book is well suited for young engineers - anyone with less than the prerequisite five years in FPGA or ASIC design - it also offers many topics that will interest the experienced designer - Wireless Systems Design, August 2004...a must-read book for those designers who either want an introduction to designing with FPGAs or need to broaden their understanding of the EDA tools available for such applications. Maxfield writes in a easy-to-read style, and provides insightful and diverse information for designers and curious readers alike. The author has never forgotten his designer roots, and the book is full of examples and chapters dedicated to such applications as gigabit transceivers, linear-feedback-shift registers, and integration of third-party cores." -- EDN