Recommend Reading for FPGAs and VHDL?

George Holland asks: "After designing several projects around PLD-based programmable logic, I decided to buy a FPGA development board (the Spartan-IIE based XSA-200) to experiment with something more capable. I'd like to find some good books on VHDL and FPGAs in general, but there are many to choose from. Some are aimed at beginners (I have a solid background in both low and high level programming languages and digital electronics), others gloss over the low-level details of an FPGA (covering RTL only, skipping floor-planning) assuming the tools with synthesize an optimal design with no manual tweaking. Trying to find something that fits in the middle is what I'm after. What books do Slashdot readers suggest? Ideally something that covers the WebPACK toolset from Xilinx or the Spartan-IIE would be best as that's what I'm using."

Comments

Re:Verilog

[raider_red]

Better yet, learn both. Verilog is the industry standard for the U.S., but VHDL is widely used in government applications and in several European companies. I've had several job opportunities based on the fact that I've worked in mixed environments with both languages.

Navabi has a pretty good book on Verilog. The book mentioned above on VHDL by Perry is a very good starting point for that language. (I'm using the 3rd edition.)

Re:Verilog

[juglugs]

Well, OK, your company dropped it. I work for a large FPGA company and being US based, we primarily write in Verilog - however, the RoW seems to ask for VHDL an awful lot... I disagree on the "more difficult to learn" comment. It may be more difficult for a SW engineer, but for a HW engineer it makes much more sense. Actually, most of the SW folks I know will agree that VHDL will not let you hang yourself in the same manner as Verilog. (And without being nasty, read your sig - you should practice what you preach :-)