I want to buy a development kit to learn more about FPGA's and programming, but not sure whether to go with xilinx or altera and which generation of FPGA eg altera cyclone 111. Does anyone have any experience with these kits??

 

A lot will obviously depend on what you ultimately want to achieve with your FPGA. If you are just wanting to gain some experience then the Cyclone III range are a good cost effective option and will give you free access to the web version of Quartus II to gain programming experience. Personally I have always tended to stick with Xilinx devices through familiarity more than anything.

Dave

 

Spartan-3E Starter Kit from Xilinx is also worth some consideration. It retails at around $160.

 

Spartan-3E Starter Kit from Xilinx is also worth some consideration. It retails at around $160.

Agreed, the Spartan-3 Gen FPGAs are excellent for a very wide range of applications. The 3E is very good value, there is also the 3A and 3AN for a little bit more than the cost of the 3E.

Dave

 

I have used the spartan 3E starter kit ( And still do) to gain familiarity with VHDL and FPGA's. I also have used Altera's Dev kits as well. In my opinion, once you are very familiar with one FPGA, it is very easy to learn another one. So in the beginning it is not all that important wich FPGA you use when it's just for learning purposes. Although most of the people that I know seem to like to go with Xlinx's FPGA based starter kits.

Here is a link where you can purchase some kits

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products...ucts&Nav2=Programmable&Cat=Programmable Logic

 

I second the recommendation of Digilent's products. Also, Xess seems to make some nice boards (fairly popular, too) that are reasonably priced, though I haven't personally used any of them.

 

thanks for the tips I will check out the websites.