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Where to start designing own FPGA chips?

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M

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CHip Design

This may be a stupid question but:

If I want to start to design my own FPGA chips where do I have to start with?
Which topics do I have to learn? Do I have to study Analog Chip design or Digital Chip design or something else? Which companies can produce samples of my design?


Another question I have about chipdesign is:
Is there a possibility to make some samples of chips at a small fab that is part of my company? or is this not possible (there are no such kind of equipments available or something else).


I am not a chipdesign engineer but it is an interesting topic for me at the moment; this is kind of "out of my world" but I would learn the overall picture and I can't get it at the moment.


Thanks for your help.
 

CHip Design

search in fab companies they will offer educational chip fabrication some times
 

    M

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Re: CHip Design

hi,
if you want fpga design, you need to konw verilog/vhdl language and some tools just like quartus/ise , no need to learn analog.
as to ASIC design, I think normally you can apply for educational purpose fund for chip manufacture , but before it, you have to learn more and more . I think it will take you some years to master all :)
so if you are a algorithm/architecture engineer, I think fpga is enough for you and suitable for you.
 

    M

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CHip Design

It's easy to get into FPGA design, compared to ASIC or custom IC design.
For FPGA design, get a demonstration board from Xilinx or Altera for example. And download the free FPGA development tools from whichever company you choose.

I don't think any ASIC place will make smaples for you unless they expect you to purchase a high quantity.
 

    M

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Re: CHip Design

Thanks all for your replies but:

The problem I have is: I understand the working of VHDL/Verilog,... and PCB Design with FPGA's.

But I want to know how an FPGA is designed and manufactured (how the chip itself is made and not how you can use it/program it).

thanks for your help
 

CHip Design

Do you want to design a FPGA or design a project on FPGA?

If you want to do the first one, maybe you can contact with the Xilinx or Altera. I think the market requirements is the decision condition.

If you want to design a project on FPGA, maybe you can start a small design with HDL, and don't care the FPGA or ASIC firstly. After the logic realization, you can move it into FPGA.

Good Luck
 

    M

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Re: CHip Design

Hi!

I want to study an own FPGA chip (not HDL) but a concurrent chip for altera and Xilinx. I want to learn where to start!
 

CHip Design

I am not an expert but this is what I would do. You can for example look at Altera and Xilinx FPGA architectures. Study how a network of LUTs can be used to implement logic functions. Read about EDA tools and how they utilize the FPGA architectures. Try to find books/papers that compare between FPGA architectures. Study the cost,power consumption,delay of each architecture and how they can be improved.

EDIT:

This can be useful
 
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    M

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Re: CHip Design

learn verilog.
then pick any fpga board with lot's of example code on the web (use google to search it)

in usa there is an organisation called MOSIS which accept small qty of chip fabrication from edu institute. u can cooperate with university and ask them to send ur chiip to MOSIS. there is another similar one in Europe, but i forget the name
 

    M

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Re: CHip Design

I think you are searching for IMEC
 

CHip Design

Hi,

Good ideal about learning FPGA design itself but first of all you have to know how is the FPGA good at the moment and then you can design a better one (^^)
 

    M

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CHip Design

Checkout this link for underlying working of FPGA's

fpga4fun.com
 

    M

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