element14, an Avnet community, continues to make developing with programmable logic devices easier, quicker and more advantageous for its community of engineers with the launch of its Path II Programmable series, sponsored by Xilinx.

Building on the success of last year's successful training series, Path II Programmable, the only program of its type in the industry, will once again provide five community members with guidance and advice from knowledgeable community members and product specialists from Xilinx and Avnet as they journey to become FPGA design engineers. Over the course of 6 weeks, the participants will blog about their journey to share their knowledge and development experience with fellow community members.

Path II Programmable leverages the Avnet Ultra96-V2 development board, an Arm-based, Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+™ MPSoC open source board to develop software applications, hardware devices and kernel programming for operating systems. By using programmable logic to accelerate the development of deep learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, the low-cost Avnet Ultra96-V2 makes the power of programmable logic accessible for all types of engineers, enabling software developers to take advantage of the benefits of hardware acceleration.

"Our Path to Programmable initiative provides members with a unique opportunity for professional development while continuing to address misconceptions around the complexity of developing products with programmable logic devices," said Dianne Kibbey, Global Head of Community and Social Media for the element14 Community. "The element14 Community is committed to supporting its members as they build projects, develop their skills and stay up to date with the latest technologies. And by using the Ultra96-V2 to complete their projects, participants will gain valuable experience for future development of AI and Internet of Things (IoT) applications."

Through the Path II Programmable program, participants will receive the tools they need to develop smart, connected systems suitable for a wide variety of applications, including:

• Artificial Intelligence

• Machine Learning

• IoT/Cloud Connectivity for Add-On Sensors

• Embedded Computing

• Robotics

• Entry Level Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC Development Environment

• Training Prototyping and Proof of Concept Demo Platform

• Wireless Design and Demonstrations Using WiFi and Bluetooth

"This program gives designers the skills they need to take advantage of increasingly popular of FPGAs, while leveraging the easy to use Ultra96-V2 board to accelerate software development," said Jayson Bethurem, product line manager at Xilinx. "We are delighted to run this program with the element14 Community again this year."

element14 is a discussion-based community comprised of more than 650,000 members that connects engineers across the globe to solve each other's technical and design challenges, and is one of the longest running networks of its kind in the electronics industry. All element14 Community members may sign up to participate in Path II Programmable before September 16, 2019 by visiting the element14 website. Anyone not a community member who is interested in this opportunity can join for free to gain access to the valuable resources of the element14 Community.

Last year's Path to Programmable series took eight community members new to FPGA SOCs and trained them to better understand the technology, development tools and design flow process over the course of a 12-week program. Trainees received a mix of instruction and mentoring provided by experts from the element14 Community, Newark and the engineering teams at Xilinx and Avnet.

To learn more about the Path II Programmable, and to sign up to enter before September 16, please visit element14.com.