Learning VHDL - Basics
Since FPGA are becoming more accessible to the hobbyist, learning how to use them can be really useful for certain applications, like DSP and video generation; moreover, engineers that are able to code in VHDL/Verilog are always requested on the job market.
In this tutorial I will cover the basics of Xilinx ISE and VHDL. I willl base my code on the Basys2 board from Digilent: it is really cheap (especially for students) and has a lot of features on board, as you can see from the picture...
PicoBlaze - Program RAM Access for an Interactive Monitor
I have a confession to make: I love PicoBlaze! There are many reasons to love it. It is a tiny CPU (96 Spartan3 slices or 26 Spartan6 slices plus a BRAM). It is simple. It is bug-free. It's pretty fast. It can reduce the size and the complexity of your design - instead of debugging a big state machine, just throw one (or more) of these in. Add a serial output and you can debug your fpga from inside out!However, there are a few problems. The...
MyHDL ... MyPWM
The PWM topic appears to be popular lately on the fpgarelated site. This is coincidence, but I typically find the topic of modulating and demodulating signals interesting. For digital systems it is always entertaining to play with PWMs. The following PWM RTL description is quite a bit different than the PWM module described by Anton Babushkin. The module presented here is a minimal PWM engine defined at design time (i.e. not run-time).
As...
StrangeCPU #4. Microcode
Summary:Sliding windows containing runs of microcode.
Table of Contents:-
Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises; StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.
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Part 2: Sliding-Window Token Machines, an in-depth exploration of this curious technology; ARM notes.
StrangeCPU #3. Instruction Slides - The Strangest CPU Yet!
Summary:Decoding instructions with a Sliding Window system. 0-Bit Sliding Register Windows.
Table of Contents:- Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises; StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.
- Part 2: Sliding-Window Token Machines, an in-depth exploration of this curious technology; ARM notes.
- Part 3. Instruction Slides - The Strangest CPU Yet! Decoding instructions with a Sliding...
StrangeCPU #2. Sliding Window Token Machines
Summary:An in-depth exploration of Sliding Window Token Machines; ARM notes.
Table of Contents:- Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises; StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.
- Part 2: Sliding-Window Token Machines, an in-depth exploration of this curious technology; ARM notes.
- Part 3. Instruction Slides - The Strangest CPU Yet! Decoding instructions with a Sliding Window...
StrangeCPU #1. A new CPU
Summary: In this multi-part series I will share with you a design, implementation notes and code for a slightly different kind of a CPU featuring a novel token machine that resolves an 8-bit token to pretty much any address in a 32-bit or even 64-bit address space, using not much more than an adder.
Table of Contents:- Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises; StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.
MyHDL Resources and Projects
Last updated 07-Nov-2017
MyHDL ResourcesIf you want to dive into MyHDL (digital hardware description in Python) there are many resources available. Below is a list of MyHDL resources, including some of the past blogs here on fpgarelated.
The MyHDL manual is a great (probably the best) place to get started.
The manual is an in-depth introduction to MyHDL. The concepts are well explained and there are examples to test while working through the...
Two jobs
For those of you following closely embeddedrelated and the other related sites, you might have noticed that I have been less active for the last couple of months, and I will use this blog post to explain why. The main reason is that I got myself involved into a project that ended up using a better part of my cpu than I originally thought it would.
edit - video of the event:
I currently have two jobs: one as an electrical/dsp engineer recycled as a web publisher and the other...
Mathematics and Cryptography
The mathematics of number theory and elliptic curves can take a life time to learn because they are very deep subjects. As engineers we don't have time to earn PhD's in math along with all the things we have to learn just to make communications systems work. However, a little learning can go a long way to helping make our communications systems secure - we don't need to know everything. The following articles are broken down into two realms, number theory and elliptic...
How to start in FPGA development? - Simulation software tools
Introduction
This post is related to the first post How to start in FPGA development? - Some tips which aimed to show other options to work on the simulation of your project. In this first approach will be explained some advantages and disadvantages of using Xilinx ISE (+ModelSim) or using ModelSim, Precision and Xilinx ISE. And finally my opinion of which are the ones I...
Embedded World 2018 - More Videos!
After the interview videos last week, this week I am very happy to release two more videos taken at Embedded World 2018 and that I am proud of.
For both videos, I made extensive use of my two new toys, a Zhiyun Crane Gimbal and a Sony a6300 camera.
The use of a gimbal like the Zhiyun makes a big difference in terms of making the footage look much more stable and cinematographic.
As for the Sony camera, it takes fantastic slow-motion footage and...
Elliptic Curve Cryptography
Secure online communications require encryption. One standard is AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) from NIST. But for this to work, both sides need the same key for encryption and decryption. This is called Private Key encryption.
Designing Embedded System with FPGA - 1
With the introduction of soft processors and related tools (like EDK from Xilinx), implementation of basic embedded system in FPGA is made easy. This requires very little or almost no knowledge of VHDL programming. Actually that’s how I started. If user is interested in taking full advantage of FPGA and its parallel processing power, then yes, detail understanding of soft processor, its peripheral bus and VHDL programming is required.
I will start with...
Learning VHDL - Basics
Since FPGA are becoming more accessible to the hobbyist, learning how to use them can be really useful for certain applications, like DSP and video generation; moreover, engineers that are able to code in VHDL/Verilog are always requested on the job market.
In this tutorial I will cover the basics of Xilinx ISE and VHDL. I willl base my code on the Basys2 board from Digilent: it is really cheap (especially for students) and has a lot of features on board, as you can see from the picture...
MyHDL @EDAPlayground
Trying out MyHDL became a little easier recently. MyHDL is now avaialbe @EDAPlayground. One can experiment with Python/MyHDL verification of HDL modules and implementing complex digital cirucits in MyHDL.
The @EDAPlayground has two main panels. On the left is the testbench and the right the HDL description to be tested.
There are a couple examples...
Going back to Germany!
A couple of blog posts ago, I wrote that the decision to go to ESC Boston ended up being a great one for many different reasons. I came back from the conference energized and really happy that I went.
These feelings were amplified a few days after my return when I received an email from Rolf Segger, the founder of SEGGER Microcontroller (check out their very new website), asking if I would be interested in visiting their headquarters...
Are you kidding me?
If I understand the blog entry [1] correctly, it's saying the industry is ready for high level synthesis (HLS), well almost. The blog states, the higher abstraction level will be achieved via C/C++/SystemC (the C-centric flows). A quote from the blog.
... getting close, and one of the biggest hurdles still to overcome is the skill set -- the combination of hardware design expertise and C++ -- ...
C/C++/SystemC, are you kidding...
MyHDL FPGA Tutorial II (Audio Echo)
IntroductionThis tutorial will walk through an audio echo that can be implemented on an FPGA development board. This tutorial is quite a bit more involved than the previous MyHDL FPGA tutorial. This project will require an FPGA board with an audio codec and the interface logic to the audio codec.
Review the Previous TutorialThe previous MyHDL FPGA tutorial I posted a strobing LED on an FPGA board. In that tutorial we introduced the basics of a MyHDL module....
Use a Simple Microprogram Controller (MPC) to Speed Development of Complex Microprogrammed State Machines
Introduction
This article will describe a synthesizable HDL-based microprogram controller (MPC), or microprogram sequencer (MPS), that can be used to provide the control of a microprogrammed state machine. Unlike the microprogrammed state machines that I described in my previous two articles, "Use Microprogramming to Save Resources and Add Functionality" and "Fit Sixteen (or more) Asynchronous Serial Receivers in the Area of a Standard UART", many microprogrammed state machines will...
Ancient History
The other day I was downloading an IDE for a new (to me) OS. When I went to compile some sample code, it failed. I went onto a forum, where I was told "if you read the release notes you'd know that the peripheral libraries are in a legacy download". Well damn! Looking back at my previous versions I realized I must have done that and forgotten about it. Everything changes, and keeping up with it takes time and effort.
When I first started with microprocessors we...
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 6. Self-Calibration Related.
This article will consider the engineering of a self-calibration & self-test capability to enable the project hardware to be configured and its basic performance evaluated and verified, ready for the development of the low-latency controller DSP firmware and closed-loop applications. Performance specifications will be documented in due course, on the project website here.
- Part 6: Self-Calibration, Measurements and Signalling (this part)
- Part 5:
Feedback Controllers - Making Hardware with Firmware. Part 8. Control Loop Test-bed
This part in the series will consider the signals, measurements, analyses and configurations for testing high-speed low-latency feedback loops and their controllers. Along with basic test signals, a versatile IFFT signal generation scheme will be discussed and implemented. A simple controller under test will be constructed to demonstrate the analysis principles in preparation for the design and evaluation of specific controllers and closed-loop applications.
Additional design...Mathematics and Cryptography
The mathematics of number theory and elliptic curves can take a life time to learn because they are very deep subjects. As engineers we don't have time to earn PhD's in math along with all the things we have to learn just to make communications systems work. However, a little learning can go a long way to helping make our communications systems secure - we don't need to know everything. The following articles are broken down into two realms, number theory and elliptic...
FPGA Bloggers Needed - New Reward System
Are you an FPGA expert? If you are an have an interest in sharing your knowledge with the FPGA community, you might be interested in the new reward system for bloggers (see the blogs section here).
The rewards will be based on page impressions, meaning that the more traffic a blog post will get, the faster it will generate rewards for the author.
Basically, a given blog post will generate $25 to the author for every 250 unique pageviews, up to a maximum total reward of $500 per blog post...
USB-FPGA : Introduction
This blog is an introduction to a series of blogs I hope to write. The blogs will cover the design and experiences I had on a project that spanned the last 6 years. The project was the development of an USB FPGA board and the supporting gateware, firmware, and software. The project has had different levels of activity over the years, ranging from none to some, but it has been an ongoing project, albeit, during sleepless nights. Lately, I have ported the HDL (gateware)...
FPGA skills for the modern world
With the ever increasing number of applications involving video processing, AI or edge computing the appetite for suitably skilled FPGA Engineers has never been higher from the market which is expected to grow to $15 billion USD by 2027!
In terms of industries opportunities can be typically found within:
- Automotive
- Aerospace
- Defense
- Data Processing
However this list is certainly not exhaustive as any application requiring algorithms which can leverage from highly parallel and...
The New Forum is LIVE!
After months of hard word, I am very excited to introduce to you the new forum interface.
Here are the key features:
1- Easily add images to a post by drag & dropping the images in the editor
2- Easily attach files to a post by drag & dropping the files in the editor
3- Add latex equations to a post and they will be rendered with Mathjax (tutorial)
4- Add a code snippet and surround the code with
Jumping from MCUs to FPGAs - 5 things you need to know
Are you a microcontroller expert beckoned by the siren song of the FPGA? Not long ago, that was me. FPGA-expert friends of mine regularly extolled the virtues of these mysterious components and I wanted in. When I made the leap, I found a world seemingly very familiar, but in reality, vastly different. I found that my years of C programming and microcontroller use often gave pre preconceived interpretations of FPGA resource material which resulted in eye-roll class mistakes in my code. I’ve gleaned five things of vital importance to help you make that transition faster than I did.
