A novel tool to introduce FPGA in digital design laboratory

The new technological scenarios in digital systems demand the introduction of FPGA very early in digital design curricula. The approach that we present in the paper is based on a new tool that extends the features of Deeds, the design suite for digital circuits developed in our department. The FPGA extension allows students to compile a project generated with Deeds into an FPGA chip, reducing to a minimum the interaction with the FPGA-specific CAD. The tool is centered around a module that allows the student to associate all the input and output of the Deeds project to the devices and resources of an FPGA development board. A code generator will produce all the VHDL and script files needed by the CAD to compile the project and load it on the board for testing.