basic components on an FPGA board

[jefflieu]

Hi everyone,
I'm a PCB virgin ... I have programmed some FPGA board before but have no experience on FPGA board design...
Could any one guide me through the basic components of an FPGA board ? such as oscillators, regulators...etc which help to enhance the reliabilties of the board and operate the FPGA? Really appreciate your time and knowledge!!!

[jefflieu]

Hi, did you mean an oscillator and a voltage regulator are sufficient to operate the fpga?
For the programming, i think i will program the chip using jtag, i know that there are 4 jtag pins on the chip. Do i need any extra circuit to program the chip? (beside the jtag cable)

[jefflieu]

Hihi, thank you very much !!!
Actually, i tried to hide the details of what i want to do so that the message is concise ...
I am going to build a board. Requirements:
- Could be used as a platform for control algorithm testing
- Could be communicate to PC: i have 2 options:
+ Parallel cable or USB
+ If possible, make it real-time data logging
- Configured by JTAG ( the simplest i guess)
- The clock is not very strict, 20MHz or 25MHz is sufficient ...

I already have a board which has: ADC, DAC and PWM chip (LD18200), this board could be connected directly to pins of a FPGA. The FPGA will drive this board to control a plant or something ...

I already developed the algorithm on RC200 celoxica and Handel C as the language. now I want to build my own hardware and software for JUST CONTROL-ALGORITHM TESTING purpose ... That's my project ...

What i was afraid of is the extra circuits to operate the FPGA ... I had no idea about these things... with you confirmation, i am very "confident" hehe...
Thank you very much...

[dima2882]

A good PCB design tutorial is available here -
http://www.pcb123.com/tutorials/PDF%20Documents/PCBDesignTutorialRevA.pdf. From your requirements, it seems you don't have anything high-speed, you could almost use a microcontroller However, there are some routing considerations you need to address, they rae summarised succinctly in the PDF, which incidentally was written by someone working for a design house. Pay special attention to the parts about large QFP and BGA devices - most FPGAs come in those packages nowdays.