Getting Started with FPGAs: Digital Circuit Design, Verilog, and VHDL for Beginners

The book is well written and is a good guide to learning about FPGAs. The problem I ran into was that I couldn't get the required software license to download the Lattice tools to use with the book. I had an old account but the password didn't work. When I tried to reset the password, that didn't work, numerous emails to Lattice ultimately didn't get a password reset, so I just returned the book and am looking elsewhere for a basic FPGA course. The author has a website on which I discovered that in the recent past others had trouble getting license files as well. It's unfortunate because the book is simple and straightforward.

I am a current Ph.D. student at a top 5 Computer Science graduate program in the US. This is the first review I have ever written for any product on any site. I needed to learn FPGAs and Verilog quickly for a research project, and had no prior experience in either. I have just completed this book, and found it to be extremely helpful. It is a great introduction to the language of the industry, relevant FPGA constructs, and Verilog (cannot comment on VHDL as I did not complete that portion of the book). I do not anticipate this book to allow me to complete my project, rather I anticipate it to provide a solid foundation and enable me to learn the manufacturer and device specific information that I need. Big thank you to the author for putting this together.

I have a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and took a class on FPGA programming in college, and I did a little bit of FPGA work early on in my professional career, but haven't touched them in about a decade. In the intervening years I've become an avid hobby electronics tinkerer doing home projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black, etc. It wasn't long ago that I found myself wanting to play around with FPGAs again, and I pretty quickly stumbled upon the Nandland YouTube channel and the accompanying blog. I was thrilled to learn that Russell Merrick, Nandland's creator, was writing a book, so I happily preordered it.As soon as it arrived, I dived right in and have been very pleased. Mr. Merrick has taken a really complex subject and made it extremely accessible for beginners, but without making it so simple that people like me lose interest. He has a great writing style that is approachable, with easy to follow practical examples and tons of wisdom gained from years of experience doing this work and sharing his passion with others. I think the best thing about this book is that it's not just a collection of coding exercises with little to no context; instead, the focus is on building a solid foundational understanding of FPGAs, how they work, and what they are (and are not) good for. And he has done all that extremely well.I highly recommend this book, whether you're a hobbyist looking to expand your horizons, a student looking to get an edge or go deeper than a surface-level course will take you, or someone like me - a rusty practitioner looking for a refresher.

This book and a modest investment ($50 - $85) for an FPGA board will get you started in programming FPGAs. I have quite a few beginner-to-intermediate FPGA books, and I find this book to be the best, most gentle and complete introduction to their world. All the included examples are shown in *both* Verilog and VHDL, all recommended tools are free, and the author's FPGA board is very inexpensive. This is an excellent hands-on way to get going with FPGAs! Only the most rudimentary issues are covered, which will serve you well. These are fundamental capabilities, upon which many, many projects can be built. I feel that most anyone can get started using this book, even if you've never programmed a single thing in your life! If you can work an Excel spreadsheet, you should be able to follow along with this book and gain the experience in working with FPGAs. Very highly recommended for total FPGA beginners!

This is a well written book, and I purchased the nandland GO board to go with it. I'm trying to learn a new skill to add to my toolbox. In my previous review, I mentioned that the software was no longer free. That's not true - anymore! The author is working on it and if you contact him, he can arrange you to get the software. So, I'm upping my review to 5 stars for that effort! It seems in the future some further arrangements will be made to make it even easier....so, get the book and the board and learn!

Getting started with FPGAs is well laid out and easy to follow. The Verilog and VHDL examples are very helpful to the reader as well as the and the step by step explanation. This book taught a self instructed FPGA programmer like myself tips and tricks I was unaware of. The best part of the book is the hands on experience with the Go Board. Experimenting with the companion board code reinforced the examples much more than just following from a book.

Good book, it started slow which is needed, but got really complex super fast. And I'm not a slow learner.

Thanks to the author and the generosity of the software manufacturer, the free licence is now available.