• VHDL migration, SoC implemented, First program running on HW

    Mario • 08/05/2020 at 20:02 • 0 comments

    Very good progress happened.

    First of I've rewritten everything in VHDL, because the very first version of my processor was in VHDL and I feel much more confident with writing it than verilog.

    As a second step I implemented a very basic BRAM module, tested most instructions (i just realized while typing this that I am still missing the shift instructions. Lazy me.) with a testbench and wired up the SoC.

    Created a simple ROM too which is for the moment directly in the SoC module file and contains just 32 instructions max for the moment, BUT I got the very first program working looking like this:

    load 0 into r0
    load 1 into r1
    load 16 into r2
    load 0 into r3
    load 5 into r5
    add r0 = r0 + r1
    set address (leds) 0x5 to r0
    set lower than r3 = r1 < r2
    branch when r3 != 0 --> 5 (to add instruction)
    sub r0 = r0 - r1
    set address (leds) 0x5 to r0
    set lower than r3 = r0 < r1
    branch when r3 = 0 --> 9 (sub instruction)
    jump 0

    This counts to 16 and back down to 0. And this works super nice! See embedded video:


    Pretty happy about this. I think I will implement a very very simple assembler first, a nice ROM module next and then will see where it goes on. The updated VHDL code can be found in my gitlab repository

  • Addition works.

    Mario • 07/29/2020 at 08:17 • 0 comments

    I think I finished writing the CPU up. Missing are the ROM and RAM.

    But I only tested load and addition commands yet. TODO: Test every instruction

    See:

    What can be seen here?
    load 5 into register 0
    load 9 into register 1
    load 2a into register 3 (Output address)
    Add reg 0 and 1, save into reg 2

    Display result (0x000e) at address (0x002a)

    Looking good.