UGH! This conversation is painful to read. Yes, it is not that hard to learn and HDL. Yes, it is not that hard to read a book on logic and understand that 1 AND 0 = 0, 1 OR 0 = 1, and 1 XNOR 0 = 0. It is even easy to throw together some simple logic designs and pretend like you are a real FPGA/ASIC designer.
HOWEVER, unless you have a firm grasp of the following concepts the design may never work in the real world: setup-time, hold-time, propagation delay, duty-cycle, jitter, SSO, pipelining, DLLs, PLLs, DCMs, CLBs, LUTs, DPMs, R=V/I, gated-clocks, clock-domain-transition, how to select the right I/O standard, duty-cycle-correction, DCI, fanout, fanin, overloading, etc.
I felt much the same way other posters do when I was fresh out of school: "I've done RTL in class... this is easy." Then reality hit when I landed my first job. Yes they talk about this stuff in school, but the professors still make you believe that it is as easy as it looks by giving whimpy projects and rubber stamping the finished product if it simulates correctly (much like many of the HDL self-teaching books). They teach you all of these concepts, but don't hold you feet to the flame when the course ends. When you finally start working you realize that these concepts aren't some obscure bits of info that you have to worry every once in a while. You need to understand and worry about all of them throughout the design cycle.
Now for the worse part: you find out that you actually know more about the FPGA you selected than the FAE that is supposed to be helping you with device/software issues. This is especially true of bleading-edge FPGA's where you get to be the guinui (sp?) pig for the ven-duh. (sorry... just venting here)
IF after all this I still haven't scared anyone away from trying, then more power to you. You will probably make a good designer someday if you work hard at it.
BOOK RECOMENDATIONS:
DIGITAL DESIGN: A Verilog HDL Primer (2nd ed), by Bhasker Verilog HDL Synthesis - A Practical Primer, by Bhasker IEEE Standard Verilog Hardware Description Language (WARNING: close to 1000 pages) Fundamentals of Logic Design, by Roth Digital Design Principles & Practices, by McCluskey
ELECTICAL ENGINEERING BASICS: Electical Circuits (4th ed), by Nilsson Electric Devices & Circuit Theory (5th ed), by Boylestad and Nashelsky
HARD CORE MICROELECTRONICS (not for the weak of heart): Circuit Design for CMOS VLSI, by Uyemura Principles of CMOS VLSI Design, by Weste and Eshraghian
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UGH! This conversation is painful to read. Yes, it is not that hard to learn and HDL. Yes, it is not that hard to read a book on logic and understand that 1 AND 0 = 0, 1 OR 0 = 1, and 1 XNOR 0 = 0. It is even easy to throw together some simple logic designs and pretend like you are a real FPGA/ASIC designer.
HOWEVER, unless you have a firm grasp of the following concepts the design may never work in the real world: setup-time, hold-time, propagation delay, duty-cycle, jitter, SSO, pipelining, DLLs, PLLs, DCMs, CLBs, LUTs, DPMs, R=V/I, gated-clocks, clock-domain-transition, how to select the right I/O standard, duty-cycle-correction, DCI, fanout, fanin, overloading, etc.
I felt much the same way other posters do when I was fresh out of school: "I've done RTL in class... this is easy." Then reality hit when I landed my first job. Yes they talk about this stuff in school, but the professors still make you believe that it is as easy as it looks by giving whimpy projects and rubber stamping the finished product if it simulates correctly (much like many of the HDL self-teaching books). They teach you all of these concepts, but don't hold you feet to the flame when the course ends. When you finally start working you realize that these concepts aren't some obscure bits of info that you have to worry every once in a while. You need to understand and worry about all of them throughout the design cycle.
Now for the worse part: you find out that you actually know more about the FPGA you selected than the FAE that is supposed to be helping you with device/software issues. This is especially true of bleading-edge FPGA's where you get to be the guinui (sp?) pig for the ven-duh. (sorry... just venting here)
IF after all this I still haven't scared anyone away from trying, then more power to you. You will probably make a good designer someday if you work hard at it.
BOOK RECOMENDATIONS:
DIGITAL DESIGN:
A Verilog HDL Primer (2nd ed), by Bhasker
Verilog HDL Synthesis - A Practical Primer, by Bhasker
IEEE Standard Verilog Hardware Description Language (WARNING: close to 1000 pages)
Fundamentals of Logic Design, by Roth
Digital Design Principles & Practices, by McCluskey
ELECTICAL ENGINEERING BASICS:
Electical Circuits (4th ed), by Nilsson
Electric Devices & Circuit Theory (5th ed), by Boylestad and Nashelsky
HARD CORE MICROELECTRONICS (not for the weak of heart):
Circuit Design for CMOS VLSI, by Uyemura
Principles of CMOS VLSI Design, by Weste and Eshraghian