Mention FPGAs to most people, and they will either give you a blank stare or think you are
talking about some kind of golf league. To most of us Makers, the term conjures up
thoughts of hardware creativity, exploration, and discovery, but many of you may have
written it off as being way too complicated to even consider for your next project. This
book is for you! It’s all about learning what amazing, easy, and affordable projects you can
construct with field programmable gate array (FPGA) technology. We will be doing this
with hands-on experiments, in a fun and practical way.
This book is not a university textbook providing in-depth studies on hardware description
languages (HDLs), HDL coding techniques, digital logic design theory, or validation methods.
There are many very good resources both online and in textbook form that accomplish
this goal. This will be more a learn-as-you-go experience. You can think of the book as
a road map to a journey of design discovery, and I’ll be your guide. But before we jump in, I
want to give you a little background on the history of FPGAs.
