N Queens on an FPGA (2014) [pdf]

[lpage]

Obligatory link to the highly approachable and all around amazing http://nand2tetris.org, which will get you to the level of FPGA knowledge necessary to tackle projects like this.

[kbob]

I am thinking that N Queens would make a great hobby FPGA learning project. Not the automatic math->HDL translation of the paper, but writing a solver directly in VHDL that would blink the solutions on an LED matrix.

It seems to me, at my level of VHDL knowledge, hard enough to be interesting but easy enough to be achievable. It's better than making 7 segment LEDs count, which was my last project.

[utopcell]

I weep for the wasted computing power that has gone to solving this problem, considering it has a closed form solution.

[strangecasts]

Just wait until you hear how much power is being spent on finding multiples of 3 and 5!

[taeric]

When was a closed form found? Last I checked, there was none. (Quickly googling shows that this is still the case.)