Debug board for learning MK/FPGA/etc?

Question

Programming

Hello. I choose a debug board for training. Only here is what to choose (microcontrollers, FPGAs) - I have not decided.
At the university there was a course on PIC16. I would like to choose what will be in demand in terms of work. What do you advise?
Currently inclined towards Xilinx FPGAs. The budget is limited to ~50$.

Answer 1

If FPGAs - Mars Rover2 board would be a good start. But there is Altera, although I don’t feel any kind of fundamental difference between them. The board from DIHALT will also be good in this case, but a rather small stone goes to it and there are no some interfaces and things characteristic of pliers (VGA, sdram, audio) - you will have to make expansion boards yourself.
I would like to recommend a Digilent board from Xilinx - the cheapest at an academic price - $ 89.
There is work with FPGAs - basically, or something related to the processing of video / audio / radio signals. Or you will prototype ASICs in them.

Answer 2

Hammer on PICi, it is no longer relevant. Of course, they continue to be used and put into products - some by inertia of thinking (the developer or management), some at the request of the customer. The fashion for them has passed, although I can’t say anything bad about them.
Of the general purpose microcontrollers, the most popular Cortex architecture (Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4) right now is in terms of job search.
Representatives of STM32, LPC17xx.
Development board www.st.com/web/catalog/tools/FM116/SC959/SS1532/PF...

Answer 3

if there was a course on PICs, and they are satisfied, continue with them. Peaks are quite in demand.

Answer 4

Yes, any stm32 Discovery, it happens for less than a thousand at retail, there is also a debugger on it, and an alter cyclone 2 with usblaster or any analogue from xilinx. I would not take the EP240, a very small number of rewriting cycles is declared, it is estimated in the hundreds, although, it seems, it was blocked by one or two orders of magnitude on the Mars rover.