Re: BEGINNER
No worries -- it's wonderful to have you as a member here -- until recently embedded systems largely consisted of microcontrollers, maybe some externam memory, and a bunch of interfaces and stuff.
More recently the microcontrollers have been augmented with FPGAs. The reason for thsi is that microcontrollers ececute programs sequentially (one instruction after another). By comparison, in an FPGA you can do lots of things in parallel at the same time -- this is particularly useful for digital signal processing (DSP) tasks.
Now some microcontrollers contain a small amount of programmable fabric, and some FPGAs contain embedded microcontrollers. The bottom line is that thsi is a really good time to learn both microcontrollers (C Programming) and FPGAs (Verilog or VHDL programming) -- engineers who know both of these will be in demand :-)
lexboray
1/25/2013 10:16:54 AM User Rank Beginner
Re: BEGINNER
@Max Maxfield Thank you very much.

Re: BEGINNER
@lexboray: Hi again -- sorry for the delay in my reply -- things have been a bit hectic the last couple of days.
Here on All Progammable Planet we're focused on Programmable Devices like FPGAs. Generally speaking these come under the heading of "hardware" however we can use the programmablefabric to create soft core processors; also some of the latest devices contain a mix of programmable fabric and hard core processors like the Zynq from Xilinx (Click Here).
Adam's latest blogs are about creating a simple software program that "talks" to the hardware (Click Here). Adam is moving toward loading a small real-time operating system (RTOS) on his Zynq.
Also, if you use the site search for "Discovering FPGAs" you will see that the author of these columns is a microcontroler expert who is learning FPGAs.
The best thing might be to look at the various columns and post any relevant questions in the "Comments field for those columns.
lexboray
1/23/2013 4:10:38 AM User Rank Beginner
Re: BEGINNER
Actually I am a student studying BSc. Computer Science and Information System at the university in Ghana. I am actually concerned with software and want know more of it.

Re: BEGINNER
@lexboray: Hello -- welcome to the site -- it's great to have you on board.
With regard to how things are run -- well, there's me (I'm the Editor in Chief) and a great group of bloggers -- we all write blogs related to programmable technology (the devices, how to use them, design tools, whatever captures our interest at the moment).
And any member of the site can comment on any of the blogs -- or on other people's comments -- and suchlike.
Also, we have a live online chat every Thursday at 10:00am Pacific USA time (6:00pm GMT). I'll be posting a blog about this later today to remind everyone, but here's a direct link you can use on Thursday.
So, tell us a bit about yourself. Are you new to FPGAs (if so, do a search on this site for "Ask Max" or "Ask Adam" or "Discovering FPGAs") or are you an expert? Are you a student or a new engineer or a grizzled veteran engineer? Are you more focused on software or hardware? Of course you don;t need to answer any of these questions if you don't want to :-)

lexboray
1/22/2013 7:25:09 AM User Rank Beginner
BEGINNER
Hello Everyone, I am new here and I would like to know how things are run in here.
Thank you
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Would you class these as adages, aphorisms, axioms, dictums, epigrams, maxims, precepts, saws, truisms, or... well, what?
Here we discover how to use the XADC (Xilinx Analog-to-Digital Convertor) in the Zynq All Programmable SoC to read the chip's internal temperature and voltage parameters and output them over an RS-232 link.
When extreme thermal cycling causes circuit boards and chip packages and the silicon die in the packages to expand and contract at different rates, problems may ensue.
In part 3 of this epic tale we consider how we might use tri-state buffers, leading up to the legendary bi-directional buffer.
Digital engineers are often confused among operational amplifiers, differential amplifiers, and instrumentation amplifiers; this is exacerbated by the fact that their circuit symbols can be similar.
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