Chu - FGPA Prototyping by VHDL examples: Xilinx SpatanTM-3 version

Copyright 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Chu, Pong P., 1959
FPGA prototyping by VHDL examples/Pong P. Chu.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-470-18531-5 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. Field programmable gate arrays-Design and construction. 2. Prototypes, Engineering. 3.VHDL (Computer hardware description language) I. Title.
TK7895.G36C485 2008
621.395-dc22
2007029063

To my parents, Chia-Chi and Chi-Te, my wife, Lee, and my daughter, Patricia

PREFACE

HDL (hardware description language) and FPGA (field-programmable gate array) devices allow designers to quickly develop and simulate a sophisticated digital circuit, realize it on a prototyping device, and verify operation of the physical implementation. As these technologies mature, they have become mainstream practice. We can now use a PC and an inexpensive FPGA prototyping board to construct a complex and sophisticated digital system. This book uses a learning by doing approach and illustrates the FPGA and HDL development and design process by a series of examples. A wide range of examples is included, from a simple gate-level circuit to an embedded system with an 8-bit soft-core microcontroller and customized I/O peripherals. All examples can be synthesized and physically tested on a prototyping board.

Focus and audience

Focus The main focus of this book is on the effective derivation of hardware, not the syntax of HDL. Instead of explaining every language construct, the book is limited to a small synthesizable subset and uses about a dozen code templates to provide the skeletons of various types of circuits. These templates are general and can easily be integrated to construct a large, complex system. Although this approach limits the freedom of syntactic expression, it will not prevent us from developing innovative hardware architecture. Because of the generality and flexibility of HDL, the same circuit can usually be described by a wide variety of language constructs and coding styles. Many of these codes are intended for modeling. They may lead to unnecessarily complex hardware implementation and sometimes cannot be synthesized at all. The template approach actually forces us to think more about hardware and develop a good coding practice for synthesis. Since we are more interested in hardware, it is more beneficial to spend time on developing 10 different hardware architectures with the same code template rather than describing the same circuit with 10 different versions of codes.

There are two popular HDLs, VHDL and Verilog. Both languages are used widely and are IEEE standards. This book uses VHDL, and a separate book with a similar title uses Verilog. Despite the drastic syntactic differences in the two languages, their capabilities are very similar, particularly for our purposes. After we comprehend the design practice and coding methodology in one language, learning the other language is rather straightforward.

Although the book is intended for beginning designers, the examples follow strict design guidelines and prepare readers for future endeavors. The coding and design practice is forward compatible, which means that:

• The same practice can be applied to large design in the future.
• The same practice can aid other system development tasks, including simulation, timing analysis, verification, and testing.
• The same practice can be applied to ASIC technology and different types of FPGA devices.
• The code can be accepted by synthesis software from different vendors.

In summary, the book is a hands-on, hardware-centric text that involves minimal HDL overhead and follows good design and coding practice to achieve maximal forward comparability.

Audience and perquisites The book contains three major parts: basic digital circuits, peripheral modules, and embedded microcontroller. The intended audience is students in an introductory or advanced digital system design course as well as practicing engineers who wish to learn FPGA-and HDL-based development. For the materials in the first two parts, readers need to have a basic knowledge of digital systems, usually a required course in electrical engineering and computer engineering curricula. For the materials in the third part, prior exposure to assembly language programming will be helpful.

Logistics

Although a major goal of this book is to teach readers to develop software-independent and device-neutral HDL codes, we have to choose a software package and a prototyping board to synthesize and implement the design examples. The synthesis software and FPGA devices from Xilinx, a leading manufacture in this area, are used in the book.

Software The synthesis software used in the book is the Web version of the Xilinx ISE package. The functionality is of this version is similar to that of the full version but supports only a limited number of devices. Most introductory development boards use FPGA devices from the inexpensive Spartan-3 family. Since the Web version supports the Spartan-3 device, it fits our need. The simulation software used in the book is the starter version of Mentor Graphics ModelSim XE III package. It is a customized edition of