The practical FPGA flow is lint/simulation, synthesis, constraints, place-and-route, timing, bitstream, programming and board validation.
Keep each flow artifact reproducible: source HDL, constraints, project scripts, generated reports and exact tool versions. GUI-only flows are acceptable for learning, but production projects should be scriptable.
Compact Gowin GW2AR board with HDMI, audio amplifier, TF card slot, SDRAM, and onboard debugger.
Gowin Semiconductor GW2AR20,736 LUTopen toolchain28.17 USD
Open-source educational Lattice iCE40UP5K board designed around the Yosys, nextpnr and IceStorm flow.
Lattice Semiconductor iCE40 UltraPlus5,280 LUTopen toolchainprice at the seller
Digilent Artix-7 board with Vivado WebPACK support, Pmods, Arduino/chipKIT style expansion, DDR3 and Ethernet.
AMD/Xilinx Artix-7open toolchainprice at the seller
