Everything FPGA designers need to know about FPGAs and VLSIDigital designs once built in custom silicon are increasingly implemented in field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Effective FPGA system design requires a strong understanding of VLSI issues and constraints, and an understanding of the latest FPGA-specific techniques. In this book, Princeton University's Wayne Wolf covers everything FPGA designers need to know about all these topics: both the "how" and the "why."Wolf begins by introducing the essentials of VLSI: fabrication, circuits, interconnects, combinational and sequential logic design, system architectures, and more. Next, he demonstrates how to reflect this VLSI knowledge in a state-of-the-art design methodology that leverages FPGA's most valuable characteristics while mitigating its limitations. Coverage includes: * How VLSI characteristics affect FPGAs and FPGA-based logic design * How classical logic design techniques relate to FPGA-based logic design * Understanding FPGA fabrics: the basic programmable structures of FPGAs * Specifying and optimizing logic to address size, speed, and power consumption * Verilog, VHDL, and software tools for optimizing logic and designs * The structure of large digital systems, including register-transfer design methodology * Building large-scale platform and multi-FPGA systems * A start-to-finish DSP case study addressing a wide range of design problems