a mARTIAN dIARY

Continuing from part I and part II

VLSI (FPGA) Project Topic Selection / List 

Like I promised earlier I am putting up some of the FPGA related projects which I feel can be taken up at college level.

I shall split them into 3 different types depending on infrastructure that’s required. Why I am doing this is because most of these projects would lend themselves to be coded pretty easily (comparatively) but it’s the infrastructure that required to get them working and SHOW that they are working on hardware that might become the stumbling block.

Simple Arithmetic

• Parity prediction in adders
• Protocol converters (eg:Manchester to UART)
• Multiplier
• 4 bit Processors
• CRC Generator
• Reed-Solomon Decoder

Since they are all Simple arithmetic  blocks , once coded they can be easily demonstrated in hardware using input switches and output LED’s that are present in most FPGA kits. Also the thing that should be kept in mind to keep their scale low (like a 4 bit word length for a processor rather than 8 bit) so that proving them on hardware is possible. If the scale increases it would be a bit hard to prove them on hardware since the pins of the FPGA are limited .You might have to think of innovative interfacing solutions like parallel to serial conversion inside the FPGA and reverse once outside using MSI shift-register chips etc

Protocols

• I2C (Master or Slave operation)
• SPI (Master or Slave operation)
• I2S
• JTAG
• UART

Here again the coding will not be an issue (not to take it lightly, but harder things are ahead) the stumbling block can be validation of the logic on FPGA. Since we need to be able to show that your chip is able to work seamlessly with the standard you would have to interface it with another device that operates in the protocol and prove that they can communicate. So along with the work on the HDL design you would have start working on the validation environment. Also interfacing, clocking etc would be harder. Also a logical oscilloscope can be very useful while debugging on hardware and access to one is an important criterion to select these kinds of projects

Application Based

• Image Watermarking on FPGA
• Traffic Signal
• Industrial Safely System
• Your Brilliant idea

In some ways, these are the safest projects to take. Here what you do is take a real life problem and solve it using electronics. You define the context of the pins and digital logic. Like a pin going high can indicate the activation of a safety latch to prevent a nuclear reactor from explosion Only difference between an ordinary electronic project and VLSI would be that the core logic that solves the practical problem would be implemented in FPGA. The actual logic to be implemented in the FPGA can be as simple as a string of ring counters or complex state machines depending on the problem that you are trying to solve AND how you propose to solve it. Also since the main idea is to (unleash your creativity and) get familiarized with FPGA flow and FPGA’s don’t lend into small form factors - a lot of packaging (“product-worthiness”)  related issues are sorted ,which would have arisen if the project had been done using components like micro-controllers and discrete components. (In the VIVA you can say that you are using the FPGA as a prototype and can go into mass production of smaller ASIC’S once the practicality is proved on FPGA :P)

As you can see my main aim was not to provide a comprehensive list of projects, which I feel is something that should be left to your imagination, but try to classify the projects based on the difficulties and infrastructure required so that you can make a informed decision which choosing the topic. I hope that this was helpful and please do leave a comment to share your experiences.