Programming an FPGA

Lucid

For the rest of the tutorial, we will be using Lucid. Lucid is an HDL made specifically for FPGAs and is designed to remove many of the pitfalls that are common with other HDLs like Verilog and VHDL (and trust me, there are many).

Please Note: If you haven't worked with Alchitry boards before, you will need to head over to their website to get set up and running before continuing with this tutorial.

Get Started with Alchitry's Lucid-FPGA Tutorials

Lucid is a fantastic place to begin working with FPGAs. I often am contacted by people who are worried about getting stuck using Lucid or want to just jump into Verilog or VHDL for some other reason. If you are just beginning, you should start with Lucid. It will teach you the proper fundamentals of hardware design before trying to fight your way through the cumbersome other HDLs.

If, down the road, you want to switch to something else, it isn’t very hard. Lucid is based roughly on Verilog and Alchitry Labs will actually convert Lucid to Verilog for you if you want to use your super snazzy modules somewhere else.

Without further ado, let’s jump into what makes up a module.