4.5 Training

Work to put together the best design team possible. Having the “right” team will have a significant impact on an FPGA project’s efficiency. Gathering an ideal team is often a challenge for smaller design groups and organizations with limited FPGA design experience. An ideal team would be heavily staffed with well-trained experienced FPGA designers. If a team cannot be assembled with the required experience, then try to select individuals with experience that can efficiently translate into FPGA design. Selecting team members with a strong interest in learning FPGA technology should be a primary objective. The following is a list of some training and support considerations.

• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Seed the team with senior FPGA designers if possible
• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Identify engineers for advanced FPGA design training based on a combination of interest in FPGA technology and related design experience such as board-level design and layout, hardware/software partitioning, simulation experience, and design debug
• <!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]-->When only a few experienced design engineers are allocated to the project, select individuals who have a willingness and ability to direct and assist others effectively, individuals who are team-oriented and who enjoy teaching others rather than highly efficient, impatient, independent designers
• <!--[if !supportLists]-->Give the experienced designers the objectives, responsibility, authority, and schedule to guide, educate, mentor and assist the less-experienced team members

       Try to rotate designers with less FPGA experience onto FPGA designers so that there are more experienced designers to pull from for future projects. Try to involve team members in the detailed FPGA schedule development so that individuals have a sense of ownership and responsibility for their specific project responsibilities and an understanding of how their tasks feed into other project tasks. Work to educate team members on the tools and techniques they will need to complete FPGA projects efficiently.

       Try to get as many team members as possible to appropriate tool, process and technology training as early in the design cycle as possible. Knowledge is power when designing with complex architectures and tools with many design options. Focused up-front training is often significantly more efficient than unstructured, on-the-job training due to the nature of FPGA design. Setting time and budget aside for training early in the design cycle can be a very good investment. And untrained design team will have a scattered design approach and may be more inefficient. Encourage and enable the team to develop the knowledge base required to make confident and well-informed design decisions. If external, for-fee training is not a realistic option, encourage designers to educate themselves with available free or low-cost training and resources. For individuals interested in being involved in FPGA development, set up in-house training and required reading and tutorial completion requirements. Develop and educate team members on the adopted company or project FPGA design process. If one does not exist, invest the time and effort to develop one. It does not need to be formal, but it should be documented so that the team knows the impact of decisions and actions on subsequent design tasks and the relationships between different design phases. Try to restrict critical FPGA technology design decisions to individuals with the necessary knowledge base and understanding of the design trade-offs required to make informed decisions.

       Manufacturer literature is the foundation or learning about specific FPGA families, components and features. While some printed literature is available, the information available online will typically be the most up-to-date. One of the challenges may be finding the information online. There are huge quantities of documents available, including data sheets, user guides, application notes, white papers, articles, and answer databases.

       The design team must be diligent in reading and cross-referencing the manufacturer’s documentation. Due to the complexity of the product and range of features offered, even within a single family, it is essential to read as much information on the specific part selected for the design, including application notes and the footnotes associated with diagrams and tables. Often information located in an application note table footnote can provide clarifying information on the best approach for implementing a specific function with in a specific part in a family. Ideally all information required to design with a specific part will be included in the data sheet and user guide or a part, but this is not always the case. It is possible for a few sentences in an application note to help clarify the understanding of a specific feature within an individual part. When there is conflict between two or more written sources, seed clarification from the manufacturer.

       It is advisable that designers copy documents that address topics important to their designs to their local machine or network; this makes it easier to reference information in the future. Documents can move and be restructured when manufacturer web pages are updated and it can be frustrating and time-consuming to try to find documents covering specific topics again. Organizing the information as it is collected can be a challenge. Files should be saved into topic-specific directories, and spreadsheets can be used to make notes about specific file contents. Many on-line files have short cryptic file names. It can be helpful to expand the name of files as they are saved locally while maintaining the original file name information. An example would be saving “xapp139.pdf” as “Virtex_JTAG_Configuration__xapp139.pdf”. Check regularly for document updates.

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