ISE wishlist

This is for the Xilinx guys on the newsgroup (sorry if you've heard this 
before):

Could you make Picoblaze a standard part of ISE distribution? All it 
takes is to include the assembler and to make ISE recognize the .PSM 
files and at build time, assemble them to VHDL files and include it with 
   the rest of the project. Maybe to also make Picoblaze into a Coregen 
block. Any thoughts?

Thanks.

Hi Jim,

I have my own wishlist too, but what you suggest is not on my list, and I
doubt will be implemented they way you suggested.

1) Xilinx politics: ISE is FPGA tool, EDK is embedded development tool. So
picoblaze would not be integrated to ISE
2) A few releases ago it was possible to create own cores for coregen, with
latest ISE releases this seems to be more hidden than it used to be.
Picoblaze could be added to coregen, that would be possible - unfortunatly I
can not do it (see before it was possible in ISE 5.x)
3) All the 'integration' actually isnt so necessary - all that is needed is
the ability of DATA2MEM to initialize the parity bits (sorry maybe that is
fixed in 7.x I havent checked). So you can just add the picoblaze with empty
BRAM and run a batch/shell script that uses DATA2MEM to combine the .PSM
into the ISE generated .BIT, pretty much similarly as EDK is doing it.

antti
PS I basically agree with you that the way PicoBlaze can be used is not very
easy, a lots of looking for what to download, fill up forms, ... all pain :(


"Jim George" <send_no_spam_to_jimgeorge@gmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:oLednQC2_6Z9yPPfRVn-pA@comcast.com...
> This is for the Xilinx guys on the newsgroup (sorry if you've heard this
> before):
>
> Could you make Picoblaze a standard part of ISE distribution? All it
> takes is to include the assembler and to make ISE recognize the .PSM
> files and at build time, assemble them to VHDL files and include it with
>    the rest of the project. Maybe to also make Picoblaze into a Coregen
> block. Any thoughts?
>
> Thanks.

> 1) Xilinx politics: ISE is FPGA tool, EDK is embedded development tool. So
> picoblaze would not be integrated to ISE
     I'm not too familiar with Xilinx politics, etc but the way I see it 
(heck, the way Ken Chapman sees it), Picoblaze is meant to replace state 
machines which have got too hairy to do the usual way, not the kind of 
stuff Microblaze/PPC is meant for.

> 2) A few releases ago it was possible to create own cores for coregen, with
> latest ISE releases this seems to be more hidden than it used to be.
> Picoblaze could be added to coregen, that would be possible - unfortunatly I
> can not do it (see before it was possible in ISE 5.x)
     Yeah, I read the XAPP, tried, and failed. I now do things the hard 
way (instantiate LUTs and FFs, and apply attributes in VHDL).

> 3) All the 'integration' actually isnt so necessary - all that is needed is
> the ability of DATA2MEM to initialize the parity bits (sorry maybe that is
> fixed in 7.x I havent checked). So you can just add the picoblaze with empty
> BRAM and run a batch/shell script that uses DATA2MEM to combine the .PSM
> into the ISE generated .BIT, pretty much similarly as EDK is doing it.
     So if all that's needed is this, just include one tiny button in 
ISE to do this... can't be so hard, can it? If any such scripts are 
freely available, please point me to them. Thanks!

	-Jim