kassane/fpga_course

This repository is a hands-on curriculum for learning FPGAs, programmable hardware chips that you configure by writing code describing digital circuits. Instead of running software on a fixed CPU, you're defining the circuit itself: blinking LEDs, reading button presses, talking to sensors over serial protocols, and eventually building a tiny computer inside the chip. The course targets the Sipeed TangNano 9K board and uses entirely open-source tooling, meaning you don't need to pay for proprietary software. It's organized into two tracks. Track A teaches hardware description language fundamentals, starting with a simple LED blink and progressing through combinational logic, state machines, UART serial communication, SPI, and PWM brightness control. Track B goes further by putting a complete soft CPU (a RISC-V processor called PicoRV32) onto the FPGA, then writing firmware for it in C and Zig, effectively running software on hardware you built yourself. This would suit someone learning digital design or embedded systems who wants practical, build-it-yourself experience rather than just theory. A hobbyist might work through Track A to understand how protocols like UART and SPI actually work at the signal level. A more advanced learner could use Track B to explore the intersection of hardware and software, how a CPU interfaces with memory and GPIO pins, and how you'd program it without a standard library. The project stands out for committing to open-source toolchains, which is still uncommon in the FPGA world where vendor-locked proprietary software is the norm. Track B's choice of Zig for firmware is also unusual, it leans into compile-time features and type-safe memory-mapped I/O rather than the more typical C approach. An Intel DE10 track is listed as work-in-progress but not yet complete.