There is a huge gap in the demand for FPGA design talents in my country every year. In the case of a huge demand gap, the development prospects are relatively considerable. So how to become an FPGA engineer?
What are FPGAs?
FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), that is, field programmable gate array, is a product of further development on the basis of programmable devices such as PAL (programmable array logic) and GAL (general array logic). FPGA is a reconfigurable The chip of the circuit is a hardware reconfigurable architecture, and its application scenario can be changed at any time through programming.
FPGA mainly has the following characteristics:
1. A semi-custom circuit, which solves the lack of flexibility of custom circuits;
2. Rapid iteration, indispensable for chip verification;
3. Industries with high technology and patent thresholds;
4. Pure Evolution from logic to fully programmable SOC;
5. The development threshold is also high;
How to become an FPGA engineer? What knowledge is required?
Verilog language and its relationship with hardware circuits.
Device structure (It is best to master the device structure of Spartan3, Vertix4 series, and the relationship between its resources and Verilog behavior description methods.).
Development tools (proficient in Synplify, Quartus, ISE, Modelsim).
Digital circuits (combination circuits, flip-flops, especially D flip-flops constitute a frequency divider, the odd multiple frequency division duty cycle is 50%, sequential circuits, and can be described in Verilog language.).
Familiar with FPGA design process (simulation, synthesis, layout and routing, timing analysis).
Proficiency in resource estimation (especially the estimation of slice, lut, ram and other resources).
Synchronous Design Principles.
Proficiency in basic concepts (such as establishment time, hold time, flow (that is, the baud rate of the FPGA design) calculation, delay time calculation (FPGA design), competition risk, method of eliminating glitches, etc.).
Possess specific design experience (for freshmen, such as graduation design).
Good design ideas (pipeline design is commonly known as beating, a compromise between speed, resource and power consumption).
Development Prospects for FPGA Engineers
FPGA itself is only the carrier of system realization. The content of programmable logic is the core, so many engineers have gradually developed into system engineers after years of product-oriented learning. It is impossible to write code all the time, which makes new employees how to live.
The FPGAs of many small companies carry many hardware design tasks, are responsible for product quality control and debugging of key system problems, and develop to senior hardware engineers.
Salary is the key to FPGA engineers. Strictly speaking, FPGA is the carrier of the system, and the salary is relatively objective. The development of FPGA itself is getting faster and faster. In the future, mainstream FPGA design will develop towards software languages such as C and C++. This is a trend to improve the productivity of sorting, and the tools also provide such a platform. The system has more and more requirements for FPGA engineers. High, and ARM's SOC products will gradually squeeze the space of traditional DSP and MCU. Therefore, if you are a postgraduate student studying FPGA well, you may have a good job, so you don’t have to worry about it.
It is said that the IC industry does not eat youth food, relying on the growth of age, constantly polishing its technical level, the older the more popular. Among them, the FPGA engineer is the case. As long as the technology is excellent and there is an opportunity to enter a big factory, the salary will naturally not be much worse. Here are a few books that FPGA engineers need to read.
1. "Verilog Digital System Design Tutorial"
Starting from the basic concepts of algorithms and computing, this book describes how to implement complex digital logic systems with hard-wired logic circuits. The book is divided into three parts, with a total of 18 chapters, including 12 examples of computer exercises and Verilog hardware description language reference manuals, which are available for readers to learn and query.
2. "Digital Circuit and Logic Design"
This book systematically expounds the basic theory of logic circuits - logic function, and its teaching tools. Focuses on the design and analysis methods of logic circuits, introduces in detail several types of medium and large-scale integrated devices with strong versatility, and introduces their applications in various fields with examples; discusses programmable logic devices and their hardware description languages A system introduction is also given.
3. "Xilinx Next Generation FPGA Design Suite Vivado Application Guide"
This book systematically discusses the performance, usage method and FPGA development method of the new generation FPGA design suite Vivado. The content of the book includes the characteristics of the Vivado design suite, the architecture of a fully programmable FPGA device, the use of the Vivado suite to create complex digital system design projects, simulation system functions, RTL analysis to generate netlist files, timing constraints and synthesis of performance requirements, layout and routing and static The entire design process such as timing analysis and generation of bit stream files, based on two design modes using Tcl instructions for project and non-project batch operations, key technologies such as synchronous design technology, HDL coding technology, timing convergence and HI.S optimized DSP algorithm, and Introduced the design method of the embedded system with examples.
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