Microsemi IGLOO2 FPGA design resources

Question

I want to start working on IGLOO2 FPGA, and I'm new to FPGAs. I searched throughout the internet for tutorials and training courses for Microsemi devices. It has a bad support and resources compared with Altera and other vendors. Can anyone help me with a starting point or any third party for Microsemi workshops?

Answer 1

You might not like this answer, but an easy way to get into FPGAs is just to switch to a board that has better support so you can learn the fundamentals. For example, with $120 you can do what I did and learn on the Papilio Pro board (it's a Xilinx part, not sure if you MUST use Microsemi). You can learn the basics of VHDL, what steps are included to get a build to hardware, learn some basic optimizations and get used to a typical design flow for simple example projects.

For official training resources, you can always see if Doulos has any resources. You can probably have your company hire them for a private training. If they do not have training resources on hand, I would expect them to follow a process similar to the paragraph above.

Otherwise, most of the time you're just going to have to tinker and keep clicking around until you find something that gets you to a blinking LED. If you're determined to start with this, start with the user guide.

Last, remember that FPGA's are very similar no matter who makes the chips. If you learn on Microsemi, you will do just fine on Xilinx, Altera, Gowin, etc.

Try to focus on "fundamentals", such as proper simulation/testbenches, why you need to run through synthesis, place and route, etc. All these steps you can use Xilinx resources (I think IGLOO2 looks similar to Zynq).