Platform Choice: Mojo V3 or Other?

[Back2Basics]

I'm starting graduate school soon, and my first class relates to learning/designing parallel computing architectures. The course is project-based, where I am free to select a programming language and platform of our choosing. I have a Mojo V3, SDRAM shield, and clock/viz shield that I purchased from (then) EmbeddedMicro a long time ago but sadly never got put to good use. I'm considering using the Mojo V3 for my coursework, but I don't know how to properly assess whether building on it or a newer platform would be the better idea.

I wasn't able to get any specific recommendations from faculty, and the university labs don't appear to have open access to FPGA development hardware at this time. I have a little experience working with Verilog, but not enough where I can claim competency on any specific platform. What would be an effective way to begin determining what FPGA architectures and/or development kits I should consider?

[alchitry]

In my experience, working with any FPGA is pretty much the same. There are some differences if you start doing more advanced stuff and utilizing some specialized resources (like SerDes or special clocking resources). However, most FPGAs have equivalents of whatever you need.

I would recommend not using the Mojo any more just because ISE is so poorly supported by Xilinx. This is true for any Spartan 3 board you may find. Get something supported by Vivado which is substantially better.

Using Lucid and Alchitry Labs or Verilog and the vendor tools are a personal choice. Lucid isn't that different from Verilog but is way more straight forward for most things. I think it is a great place to start and transitioning later isn't hard if you want/need to.