Programmable hardware devices like the FPGA, CPLD and PSoC fascinate me. These devices are intriguing as they offer the speed of dedicated hardware, coupled with the flexibility and re-programmability of software. To me this is an irresistible combination. The rapid growth in capability and application of FPGA devices continues to be impressive. For example, it […]
Welcome to FPGA Coding! Read More »
In this next article I am going to explore a component commonly used in circuit design, specifically the FIFO buffer. A FIFO is a First-In-First-Out data structure. Our buffer design will utilize the register file created earlier. Designing a FIFO A FIFO is a memory buffer with a fixed storage capacity. And there are two
Fiddling around with a FIFO circuit quick start Read More »
This article explores the concept of a ROM or Read-Only-Memory circuits. Today, the venerable ROM chip is rare, largely replaced by updateable non-volatile storage devices like flash memory. Before the age of flash updateable firmware, most consumer electronic devices had their data and code permanently encoded in one or more chips. If you needed to
Ruminating on the concept of ROM circuits Read More »
You may have heard about SystemVerilog. And if you have, maybe you have also heard that SystemVerilog is simply an extension of Verilog, focused on testing and verification. That is both partly true and partly false. Let’s explore this a bit further to learn why that is the case. A brief history of SystemVerilog As
Sussing out SystemVerilog vs. Verilog Read More »
It is back to FPGA topics for this next article. This time we are going to be exploring register files. A register file is nothing more than an array, collection or “file” of registers. We have encountered registers before, first when I introduced sequential circuits and the Verilog reg keyword. A register is nothing more
Exploring Register Files Read More »
I am taking a short break from FPGA topics because I want to introduce you to Firth. Firth is an experimental programming language heavily inspired by Forth. Its design goals are to be small, fast and efficient, portable and embeddable. Forth was designed by Charles Moore in 1968 to be a procedural, stack-oriented programming language
Meet the Firth of Forth Read More »
Installing a new SSL certificate has become a periodic ritual. As I mention in my author bio I manage several websites. One or more times a year I have to repeat the process of installing new certificates on these websites. This shouldn’t be difficult, but for reasons which I’ll explain later, it is sometimes more
Installing a GoDaddy SSL Certificate on Azure Read More »
Finite State Machines (FSM), are very important in hardware design. They represent systems that transition through a set of internal states. These transitions are defined in terms of both external inputs and the current internal state. A change to an external input causes a change to the internal state. State changes sometimes also trigger an
The Infinite Utility of Finite State Machines Read More »
For this next project I’ll create a Pulse Width Modulation circuit. What is Pulse Width Modulation? Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), is a method of controlling average voltage or power in a digital circuit. It accomplishes this by varying the on/off duty cycle of the output signal. A duty cycle of 0 results in 0% time
Time to Create a Pulse Width Modulation Circuit Read More »
Previously I designed a simple configurable countdown Timer with asynchronous reset, enable and limit. Now I will add a pre-scaler to the Timer. What exactly is a pre-scaler? You can think of the pre-scaler as an integer value that scales (or divides) the timer clock signal down to a lower frequency. Why Do We Need
Adding a Pre-Scaler to the Timer Read More »
This time I am going to create a configurable timer circuit with both an enable and a settable start value. You may recall that we’ve previously created counter circuits. For some examples see Creating a Configurable counter Circuit and Designing a Simple 4-bit Counter Circuit. Timers and counters are close related and very similar. It
A Timer Circuit With Enable And Limit Read More »
