Category: building_a_processor
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Building a Processor, Part 8: UART Communication
This is part 8 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about getting the UART peripheral to work so that I can communicate directly between the board and my computer. Previous: further optimizing the debouncer. In my previous post, I brought up the…
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Building a Processor, Part 7: Optimization Debugging
This is part 7 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is mostly a continuation of the previous post, about optimizing the debouncer circuit I wrote. Previous: optimizing the debouncer. In the last post, I did what I thought were some cool optimizations to…
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Building a Processor, Part 6: Optimizing the Debouncer
This is part 6 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about optimizing part of the circuit that I built in the previous part. Previous: simple counter. In the previous post, I briefly touched on a simple speed optimization that I made to the…
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Building a Processor, Part 5: Simple Counter
This is part 5 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about adding some simple counter functionality to the push buttons. Previous: using a dcm. I now have a working display, but my board right now has no state to it. I can…
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Building a Processor, Part 4: Using a DCM
This is part 4 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about using a DCM to manage the clock frequency. Previous: seven-segment display. In the previous post, I created a simple driver for the display, which uses the externally-provided clock to count time.…
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Building a Processor, Part 3: Seven-Segment Display
This is part 3 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about getting the seven-segment display to work. Previous: first circuit. This post is going to be pretty short; there are many great resources out there that give step-by-step descriptions for building the circuitry…
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Building a Processor, Part 2: First Circuit
This is part 2 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about getting all the tools working, and getting a very basic circuit programmed onto the FPGA. Previous: getting started. At this point, I have a Nexys 3 board, and have Xilinx ISE…
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Building a Processor, Part 1: Getting Started
This is part 1 of my Building a Processor series, where I try to build a processor on an FPGA board. This post is about selecting+buying a development board, and what we’ll get with one. At this point, I’ve hopefully gotten you uncontrollably excited about buying and using an FPGA, and now you’re wondering…
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Building a Processor: The Plan
One of my current projects is to build a Python compiler — nothing to show yet, but the project is going well. In the course of doing it, I brought up the idea of “compiling” some of the Python to an FPGA instead of to machine code (or in the case of my compiler, LLVM…
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