Introductory course to VHDL and HLS FPGA programming

23 Jun 2025, 09:30 → 27 Jun 2025, 18:00 Europe/Rome

Laboratorio Elettronica (Università degli Studi Milano Bicocca)

Introduction to FPGA programming

Image taken from: https://https://digilent.com

The course is mainly thought for the new personnel hired by means of the ICSC project to work on projects and research activities in the framework of Spoke 2 ("Fundamental Research And Space Economy") and Spoke3 (Astrophysics & Cosmos Observations), but open to anyone interested within the fundamental physics community.

Lecturers: 

• Andrea Triossi (University of Padova) 
• Mirko Mariotti (University of Perugia)
• Sioni Summers (CERN)

 

Facilitators for the hands-on sessions: 

• Giulio Bianchini (University of Perugia)
• Francesco Brivio (INFN Milano Bicocca)

 

Prerequisites: 

• Basic notion of digital electronics (combinatorial and sequential circuits)
• basic C++ programming with usage of  templates
• basic python programming
• entry level knowledge of machine learning (not really needed, but it may help for the last part of the course)

 

Target skills and knowledge: The aim of the course is to provide a hands-on programming laboratory of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) through the VHDL hardware description language 

Course unit contents:

• Introduction to FPGAs
• FPGA Architecture
• FPGA programming flow
• VHDL language by examples
  • Introduction to the Vivado programming framework and the Arty A7 board
  • Combinational circuits on FPGA
  • Sequential circuits on FPGA
  • Arithmetic operations on FPGA
• Case study: UART interface

 

Suggested readings:

• Manual for syntax
  • The VHDL Golden Reference Guide (DOULOS)
  • VHDL handbook (HARDI)
• Books
  • Zwolinski,M., Digital System Design with VHDL. Harlow: PRentice Hall Pearson Education
  • Tappero F., Mealy B., Free Range VHDL

 

All the participants are requested to have a copy of Vivado installed on a local machine

The Course will be held at  Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca

 

Monday, 23 June

Introduction to VHDL

Hands On

Tuesday, 24 June

Introduction to VHDL

Hands On

Wednesday, 25 June

Introduction to VHDL

Hands On

Thursday, 26 June

Introduction to HLS

Hands On

Friday, 27 June

Introduction to HLS

Hands On