APS-X84 VHDL/FPGA SYNTHESIS TUTORIAL

INTRODUCTION

This book and subsequent labs are intended to be a quick synopsis of what it takes to go from concept to hardware using FPGAs and VHDL. The book is not intended to be the end all of VHDL or FPGA manuals but is intended to give the new and mid level user a real world approach to conquering the learning curve of FPGAs and VHDL in general. This approach takes you from FPGA fundamentals through VHDL synthesis and through the fitting routing process and into an actual FPGA. The FPGA will be controlled in real time using C control programs on the APS-X84 FPGA board in a PC. Users of this manual don't have to know C code (since the executable control programs are provided) but the examination of this control code helps understand actual hardware implementations of the FPGA design.

HARDWARE

As was mentioned, we will be using the APS-X84 FPGA board for all of our design implementations. The board comes complete with a socketed 5202 FPGA and the board's architecture is set up as independently as possible from external hardware. The idea was to allow users to do all kinds of designs on the board with the general stimulus and outputs from the FPGA being handled off chip in a general purpose 8255 chip, and the PC decode being done in a separate 16V8 PAL. All the available IO pins are brought out to 20 pin IDC connectors at the top of the board. The board can also be used outside the PC using the Xchecker cable or any other suitable download cable. A X84 Board PDF file brochure can be seen HERE. More information on the X84 board itself can be seen HERE Lab kits descriptions and pricing can be seen HERE.

X84 Board on PC ISA Bus

X84 Board in Stand Alone Mode

X84 FPGA BOARD (Top View) PIN CONNECTIONS

SOFTWARE

We will be using the XILINX Foundation Software for our examples here. This software includes the XVHDL (Metamor) VHDL compiler.

APS sells the Foundation Software bundled with the X84 board at very reasonable prices. (see X84price.html) . The C code examples were compiled using Borland C++ 5.0, although any C++ compiler will probably work.

TEST EQUIPMENT

PODALYZER

We make use of the PODALYZER from Boulder Creek Engineering. It's PC serial port 100Mhz Logic Analyzer. It is not require to do the labs, but is coupled with the rest of the Lab Kits, it will make a very convenient FPGA package, with all aspects of development and test, (including measurements) ,being done on one platform.

This device is available from APS for the APS lab kits as an option.