kmod's blog

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]