Hackaday · Creativity & design

Exploring the Tang Nano 20K FPGA Board

The Tang Nano 20K is an affordable FPGA board for learning. FPGAs offer advantages over microcontrollers for specific high-speed, parallel tasks.

FPGAs evolved from expensive custom chips to accessible devices. The Tang Nano 20K, featuring a GOWIN GW2AR-18 FPGA, is used to update learning materials. FPGAs allow configurable blocks and connections for custom logic.

FPGAs excel in applications needing immediate, parallel responses, like monitoring numerous sensors. Microcontrollers handle simpler tasks, but FPGAs are better for continuous, high-speed input processing.

The Tang Nano 20K's FPGA has 20,736 LUT4s and 15,552 flip-flops, comfortable at low hundreds of MHz. It includes RAM, an 8 Mbyte SDR SDRAM, multipliers, a clock generator, and QSPI flash.

The FPGA workflow involves defining logic in HDL, setting pin constraints, and running synthesis and place-and-route to generate a bitstream for download.

FPGA logic uses programmable Look-Up Tables (LUTs). A Boolean expression is translated into a table that produces the correct output.

Verilog code defines hardware wiring. A simple example connects switches to LEDs, with constraint files mapping logic to physical pins.

Software setup on Linux required resolving dependencies and configuring drivers. Open-source tools may offer easier setup. Future topics include open-source tools and synchronous logic.

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