Hi
I'm Anish Desai a recent master's graduate student from NC state. USA. I recently joined open core and want to start contributing to projects asap. However because of my inexperience I am in need of some guidance. I would like to how a novice verilog ASIC engineer would start to help out. I am still learning the nitty-gritties of this site and the SVN repository. Any guidance on the matter of starting out on this website is welcome.
Regards,
Anish Desai

Welcome to the site, Anish!

Have you read through the discussion Cameron and I are working through on this thread? He's asking some of the same questions.

Dan

Two most important things:

1> Decide on a project/core - lots of them available here, it is completely your choice before building something entirely by yourself.

2> BUY an FPGA and do the implementation yourself (there a hell lot to learn here).

All the best,
dpaul

If funds are tight, you can still do a lot with just Verilator and a project idea, rather than buying an FPGA board.

That's actually the situation I am in: I would like to build a project using a high-end FPGA board that I cannot afford. I started with just Verilator. For every part of my project, I built a Verilog core and a C++ test-bench, often needing to build simulators for various pieces of hardware along the way. Then, using Verilator, I would proved that each piece of my algorithm worked. I then bought a low end Basys-3 development board and implemented some pieces of my algorithm on it, such as the dblclockfft project. Much to my surprise, Verilator and the FPGA board don't act the same and I needed to do some more debugging. Having the test-benches, the simulators, and the ability to verify even the smallest pieces of any design were very valuable.

So I'm not disagreeing that buying an FPGA board is valuable, or that there's a wealth of information to learn that cannot be learned without one. I'm just saying that you can do a lot on a shoestring budget before you purchase your first FPGA board.

Dan

Nice information Dan, thanks!