Altium FPGA LiveDesign Kit -Designing with FPGAs （2）

Published:2011/8/17 21:41:00 Author:Phyllis From:SeekIC

By Paul Goossens

Software

The accompanying software is an evaluation version of the Protel/Nexar software suite from Altium. This version is time limited (30 days). Keep in mind that these 30 days start counting down from when the package is sent! It makes sense therefore, to install and try everything out immediately once you receive the package.

This software looks very polished and it is definitely worth the effort to try all its features. There are too many features for all of them to be described here. It is certainly no exaggeration to state that this software contains everything that is necessary to complete your own FPGA design from beginning to end. Even the firmware for so-called ’soft-core’ processors can be developed with this software! While trying the various examples you will quickly become familiar with most of the functionality of this software.

In addition to the enclosed software, you will need to install software from the FPGA manufacturer. If your board is fitted with a Xilinx FPGA, then you will need the free Web-ICE-Pack software. In the case of the Altera FPGA you will need the Quartus software (also a free download). With our version of the software, the latest version of Quartus was not yet supported. On Altinm’s website you can find how to solve this problem very easily. It is only a case of tweaking a small text file. Very simple, but you just need to know how.

Soft-core





This development kit is naturally accompanied by a number of examples. These can be roughly divided into 2 categories, namely pure hardware and soft-core-processor based designs. Before we go any further we will explain the term softcore-processor.

A soft-core-processor is a microprocessor that is programmed inside an FPGA. These processors are usually designed in a higher description language, such as VHDL or Verilog. An advantage is that any signal from inside the processor can be examined and routed to the outside world. It is also not inconceivable to add some ’custom’ instructions to the instruction set of the processor, just for this particular application!

There are three different soft-core-processors among the examples. The TSK51 is an 8051-compatible processor, the TSK80 is compatible with the Z80 and finally there is the TSK165, which is compatible with the PIC 16-serias from Microchip.

In addition to the design of the processor, there is also the necessary firmware to set this processor to work. The software suite therefore also contains a C-compiler, which supports these processors. Designing hardware, software and now even your own processor can be done in just one software suite!

Examples

The supplied examples range from simple to extremely complex. So there is something to appeal to anyone. There are examples that produce some simple effects using the LEDs, but there is also an example of a complete ’Pacman’ video game with PS/2-inputs for mouse and keyboard and a video output for the screen! There are also some intermediate complexity examples such as a clock with alarm function.

To get an impression of the scale of the designs in the FPGA, we compiled an included example that contains no less than 4 processors (TSK165). Then we looked at a report from the compiler software and it appeared that this design used only about 1/3 of the available resources of the FPGA!

All examples can be programmed in the FPGA after compilation and be tested directly on the board.

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