The FPGA Programming Handbook - Second Edition

2

FPGA Programming Languages and Tools

In the previous chapter, we explored what makes up an FPGA and looked at ASICs and Boolean functions, the underlying technology. We saw how these simple gates can be stitched together to create more complex functions. We explored the AMD Xilinx Artix 7 architecture and the Nexys 7 development board.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following main topics:

• Hardware Description Language (HDL)
• Introducing Vitis and Vivado

Technical requirements

To follow along with the examples in this chapter, you need the following hardware and software.

Hardware

Unlike programming languages, SystemVerilog, Verilog, and VHDL are hardware description languages; to really see the fruits of your work in this book, ...