MicroZed Chronicles: Webinars, Blogs, and Projects from 2021

Editor’s Note: This content is republished from the MicroZed Chronicles, with permission from the author.

The past 12 months have been rather busy and exciting for the chronicles. In this last post of 2021, I thought I would summarize several of the most interesting blogs, projects, and webinars of the year.

Things got off to an exciting start with a two-part virtual workshop which explained how to create the classic pong game using the Basys 3 Artix-7 FPGA board. This project highlights using a MicroBlaze, high-level synthesis, and Vivado IP Integrator to create the hardware solution along with Vitis for the SW environment. If you want to recreate this, you can find the workshop recordings, instructions, and required code elements here.

Speaking of high-level synthesis, that was the subject of my recent webinar which provided an introduction to Vitis HLS. It’s used in creating both Vivado and Vitis IP elements along with a walk through of two different types of designs -- an image processing based (as used in the pong project) and a PID control loop. You can find the webinar recording here.

If you want to know about image processing, especially for industrial imaging, I ran three webinars in conjunction with Avnet and onsemi to look at image processing on the Ultra96-V2. There is also three step-by-step technical notes demonstrating the project build that was used in the webinar series.

For those more interested in working with advanced silicon devices like the RFSoC, I ran a webinar with Microwave Journal looking at the RFSoC architecture and how we can create single chip radio solutions. Webinars and workshops are great for engaging with people and sharing my love of FPGAs and embedded systems. 

Of course, my weekly blog has continued throughout the year. Here are several of my favorites.

• FPGA Can Do AI, Can AI Do FPGA, a look at GitHub Copilot
• Implementing PID Algorithms in HLS
• A Blast from the Past – Clocking Techniques for When You Do Not Have a PLL or DCM Available
• Hello World from Versal and Vitis

One of the highlights this year has been bringing up the smart sensor IoT board which was designed for the book. Its bring-up journey has been rather pain free and it was also nice to see the book published.

While the semiconductor world has experienced supply issues requiring the re-design of existing boards, I have written several blogs and a whitepaper on how to migrate Spartan-6 designs to 7 Series and beyond. 

As we go into 2022, the weekly blogs will continue along with the webinars and projects. Please reach out and let me know the areas and devices you would like to see me focus on and talk about.

Until next year, have a great holidays and new year!