I thought I would kick off 2025 with a look back at what we had achieved over the last year, it has been one of my busiest years yet and we have written some great blogs, projects, webinars and of course done some great engineering.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk to a group of students and compiled a list of things I had done in 2024, I did not end up using it in the end. But the list of things I could publicly talk about was pretty long, there are several other developments under NDA at the moment.
Wrote 52 plus technical blogs, 12+ Hackster Projects, 12 Articles on Engineering.
Wrote 10 technical white papers.
Hosted 6 webinars on FPGA design.
Ran four FPGA 5 day design classes.
Wrote one to be released three day course on Versal Edge development.
Developed Two boards based around Kria SoM for clients.
Developed Two boards for Adiuvo including the S7 Tile.
Developed Two FPGA based applications for Space.
Launched our own Space Communications IP Range.
Attended and spoke at four conferences.
Custom KRIA Board working (first time) controlling the servos and lathe
So lets take a look back at some of what I consider the highlights.
I enjoyed developing and delivering all of the webinars however, two of them which are very complimentary however, were the AMD Vivado™ Design Suite Essentials: Key Techniques for Superior RTL Development. This webinar looked at how we can write more effective RTL to achieve best performance in our logic designs.
We looked at elements such as hierarchical design, registering IO and placement wrappers, working with resets and control sets along with pipelining. The second webinar which built on the techniques demonstrated in the first webinar was our Tackling Timing Webinar which examined how to achieve a baseline timing closure, walking through achieving timing closure of a design which is failing timing closure.
While the blogs tend to focus on a specific element of design, or board my Hackster projects provide in depth project explanations which look at how to create specific applications. We started the year with a live build along, looking at how we could create a motor control application using the Zu Board and PetaLinux.
Project wise the most popular project in 2024 was looking at how we can simulate FPGA designs using Cocotb, while a close second was the design of the S7 Tile.
A couple of other very popular projects where the getting to grips with Git project and the Processor expansion module.
When it comes to blogs our top four blogs of 2024 each of which received about 10,000 views were
Linear Feedback Shirt Registers - Looking at how we can develop LFSRs in logic.
The Frequency Domain – Introducing the basics of working with the frequency domain.
Turning concepts into reality the FPGA screen challenge – Outlines a project we provide to our graduates.
XDMA drivers – Looking at XDMA drivers and how they work with XDMA.
So what does 2025 hold ? We are going to see the launch of the Versal Edge AI course, of course the blogs, projects and webinars will continue. We are going to start looking a little more at the accelerated flow in Vitis and I am also going to focus more on some more complex applications real world applications.
If you have any suggestions I would love to hear them.
Workshops and Webinars
If you enjoyed the blog why not take a look at the free webinars, workshops and training courses we have created over the years. Highlights include
Upcoming Webinars Timing, RTL Creation, FPGA Math and Mixed Signal
Professional PYNQ Learn how to use PYNQ in your developments
Introduction to Vivado learn how to use AMD Vivado
Ultra96, MiniZed & ZU1 three day course looking at HW, SW and PetaLinux
Arty Z7-20 Class looking at HW, SW and PetaLinux
Mastering MicroBlaze learn how to create MicroBlaze solutions
HLS Hero Workshop learn how to create High Level Synthesis based solutions
Perfecting Petalinux learn how to create and work with PetaLinux OS
Boards
Get an Adiuvo development board
Adiuvo Spartan 7 / RPi 2040 Embedded System Development Board
Adiuvo Spartan 7 Tile - Low Risk way to add a FPGA to your design.
Embedded System Book
Do you want to know more about designing embedded systems from scratch? Check out our book on creating embedded systems. This book will walk you through all the stages of requirements, architecture, component selection, schematics, layout, and FPGA / software design. We designed and manufactured the board at the heart of the book! The schematics and layout are available in Altium here Learn more about the board (see previous blogs on Bring up, DDR validation, USB, Sensors) and view the schematics here.