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Messages from 137850

Article: 137850
Subject: Re: LUT design / Transmission gates or pass transistors?
From: maher <xfiles.detector@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:58:03 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Jan 31, 8:37=A0pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 31, 7:56=A0pm, maher <xfiles.detec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Jan 31, 4:36=A0pm, rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > On Jan 31, 1:02=A0pm, maher <xfiles.detec...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > well, if you understand the difference then please let me know. But=
 if
> > > > you don't, then don't pretend to be "Abo El3oreef" -- translates to=
: a
> > > > person who pretends to be knowledgeable while he don't know anythin=
g!
>
> > Sorry if you understand my reply in a wrong way. I just replied the
> > same way you replied my original message!
>
> > > Are you asking what the difference is or are you just being rude?
>
> > > This is the sort of stuff that can be figured out with a simple googl=
e
> > > search. =A0Every question asked here does not have to be answered her=
e.
>
> > Back to my original question: I don't ask what is the different
> > between transmission gates and pass gates; I know exactly what the
> > difference is. What I am asking about (as specified in my first post,
> > sorry I changed my nick name from "abbas" to "maher") is the circuit
> > level design of lookup tables in commercial FPGAs such as Vitretx-II
> > pro from Xilinx. Simply, this is my question. I would be grateful to
> > those who can reply and provide references.
>
> A transmission gate is a lot bigger, requiring two pass transistors
> and an inverter to drive the complemented one. =A0A simple pass
> transistor will do nicely for nearly any digital signal gating. =A0A
> transmission gate is typically used for analog signals where you need
> the resistance to remain relatively constant. =A0A simple pass
> transistor has a variable resistance as the input voltage changes...
> ok for most digital stuff, but not so good for analog.
>
> I think if you actually understood the difference, you would
> understand why transmission gates are not used in FPGAs. =A0These parts
> are all about density and pass transistors are used both for route
> switching and in the LUTs for the output mux from the memory elements
> (a RAM is just memory elements with their outputs muxed together.)
> What did you find when you searched on Google?
>
> Rick- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Thanks rick. You are right about the point that FPGAs are about
density, and it is important to have smaller size components, i.e.
pass transistors to implement lookup tables rather than transmission
gate, though level restorers and buffer are used with pass-transistor
based LUTs to restore the signal level since pass gates are not
perfect for all levels. What made me confused, and originally ask the
question, is that I found the following patent filed by Xilinx in
2003:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=3Dz4IOAAAAEBAJ&dq=3Dlow+power+lookup+table=
+transmission+gate

If you read the abstract, you will notice that the inventors claim
that although the gate count increases in the LUT when TGs are used,
this can be mitigated by removing the level restoring circuits (they
call it half latches) required in pass-transistor based designs, and
removing initialization circuitry that is unnecessary by the TG-based
design.


Please have a look at that patent and let me know if you have any
references that describe the circuit design of LUTs for low power
operation used in the industry.

Article: 137851
Subject: Heavily pipelined design
From: Ehsan <ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:34:56 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Hi,

I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
fan-out (probably something around 1500).

Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
experience?

BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
choose either to use or not to use?


Article: 137852
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Matthew Hicks <mdhicks2@uiuc.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 05:02:12 +0000 (UTC)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
> pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
> aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
> some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
> signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
> clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
> fan-out (probably something around 1500).
> 

Can you anticipate this freeze?

> Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
> experience?
> 
> BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
> consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
> choose either to use or not to use?
> 

It will probably consume routing resources.


---Matthew Hicks



Article: 137853
Subject: Re: LUT design / Transmission gates or pass transistors?
From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 06:03:14 +0000 (UTC)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> wrote:
(snip)
 
> A transmission gate is a lot bigger, requiring two pass transistors
> and an inverter to drive the complemented one.  A simple pass
> transistor will do nicely for nearly any digital signal gating.  A
> transmission gate is typically used for analog signals where you need
> the resistance to remain relatively constant.  A simple pass
> transistor has a variable resistance as the input voltage changes...
> ok for most digital stuff, but not so good for analog.

Driven by SRAM cells, which have the complement signal available,
you don't need the inverter.  So now it is down to one transistor
vs. two, something that will have to be optimized along with
the rest of the design.

In early FPGAs the routing lines could be driven from different
points through pass transistors (or transmission gates).  With
the scaling to current sizes, they require intermediate buffers
such that signals can only go one direction.  Presumably the
exact location for buffers along with the decision for pass
transistors vs. transmission gates are just a small part of
the design decisions that need to be made to make a high
performance FPGA design work.

-- glen

Article: 137854
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Peter Alfke <alfke@sbcglobal.net>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:26:12 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Jan 31, 8:34=A0pm, Ehsan <ehsan.hosse...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
> pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
> aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
> some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
> signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
> clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
> fan-out (probably something around 1500).
>
> Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
> experience?
>
> BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
> consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
> choose either to use or not to use?

Ehsan, you did not mention the clock frequency, only the high fan-out
of 1500.
You can gate the clock, with the enable input to the global clock
buffer/multiplexer.
Seems like a better solution to me.
Peter Alfke

Article: 137855
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: "Jan Bruns" <testzugang_janbruns@arcor.de>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 08:49:30 +0100
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>

"Peter Alfke":
> On Jan 31, 8:34 pm, Ehsan <ehsan.hosse...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
>> pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
>> aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
>> some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
>> signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
>> clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
>> fan-out (probably something around 1500).

Can the ce signal be pipelined, too? If not: Does it actually have a high
combinatorial delay, compared to the expected clock period?

>> Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
>> experience?

Hm, I'm not fully sure about this. At least it might be the way to go
if you want the tool chain to not bore with warnings about things
you intended.

>> BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
>> consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
>> choose either to use or not to use?

You'll likely already have a lot of ce-signals, and many of them
might actually be non-combinatorial, so comining with a global ce
would require some combinatorial logic per local ce.

> Ehsan, you did not mention the clock frequency, only the high fan-out
> of 1500.
> You can gate the clock, with the enable input to the global clock
> buffer/multiplexer.
> Seems like a better solution to me.

But if the pipeline requires quater-clocks, this would end up with
two additional global clock buffers. Probably a little too much,
compared to the percentage of area-usage, that 1.5K FF might mean.

Gruss

Jan Bruns


Article: 137856
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: nico@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel)
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:17:50 GMT
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Ehsan <ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
>pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
>aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
>some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
>signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
>clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
>fan-out (probably something around 1500).
>
>Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
>experience?

Just try it first. If the signal gets too slow or too heavily loaded,
make multiple clock enable signals which do the same to divide the
load. But my guess is that the routing software already takes care of
this issue.

>BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
>consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
>choose either to use or not to use?

The CE is usually included in the combinatorial logic so expect some
additional combinatorial logic to be used.

-- 
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
                     "If it doesn't fit, use a bigger hammer!"
--------------------------------------------------------------

Article: 137857
Subject: Selecting a starter FPGA board
From: gm <gm@nomail.com>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:27:20 +0200
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Hi to all

I haven't touched FPGAs or VHDL since the university years so I was 
thinking to get a starter board in order to get back to the path. I did 
find some cheap boards out there but I am not sure if I could burn 
something like a 32-bit RISC soft core on that. I mean how many logic 
blocks (for example of the Xilinx architecture) would be needed for a 
project like this, assuming that it is of the size of an OpenSPARC? 
Could you suggest me a cheap board (up to $400) with some good features 
and maybe an FPGA capable of hosting a good-sized core. Also good 
features would be VGA,PS/2,ethernet. Thanks

Best regards
GM

Article: 137858
Subject: Re: Selecting a starter FPGA board
From: glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 09:55:08 +0000 (UTC)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
gm <gm@nomail.com> wrote:
 
> I haven't touched FPGAs or VHDL since the university years so I was 
> thinking to get a starter board in order to get back to the path. I did 
> find some cheap boards out there but I am not sure if I could burn 
> something like a 32-bit RISC soft core on that. 
(snip)
> Also good features would be VGA,PS/2,ethernet. Thanks

I recently got a Digilent Spartan3E board, which was the
XC3S500E.  There are many boards with VGA, serial, and PS/2
keyboard, but not so many with ethernet.

That might be a little small for some 32 bit processors,
if you want a lot of extra logic (ethernet MAC, video generator),
but if you keep the rest of the design small it might fit.

I plan to start with smaller processors (such as the 8080)
and work up to larger ones.  Maybe the 68020 wouldn't be
so big (maybe even microcoded), or a small SPARC.  
UltraSPARC is probably too big.

-- glen

Article: 137859
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Andreas Ehliar <ehliar-nospam@isy.liu.se>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 11:44:19 +0000 (UTC)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On 2009-02-01, Ehsan <ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com> wrote:
> Mathew,
> No, the freeze cannot be anticipated. Actually, the output of the
> pipeline would be connected to a FIFO and once the FIFO is full the
> pipe should be halted. The data within the stages should not be lost.
> However, we can change the pipeline design so that the number of
> working cycles are known. I mean, we can wait until the FIFO becomes
> empty and then start writing to it. In the mean time, there would be
> no FIFO reads until it gets Ful. Therefore, the number of working
> cycles are known, i.e. the size of the FIFO.


Could you create a high watermark signal in the FIFO when there is
room for around 4 more words in the FIFO? If so you will have plenty
of time to propagate a pipelined "clock enable" signal to your
datapath with a moderate amount of fan-out for every level of
pipelining in your CE signal.

/Andreas

Article: 137860
Subject: Re: Selecting a starter FPGA board
From: Antti <Antti.Lukats@googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 04:40:30 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Feb 1, 11:27=A0am, gm <g...@nomail.com> wrote:
> Hi to all
>
> I haven't touched FPGAs or VHDL since the university years so I was
> thinking to get a starter board in order to get back to the path. I did
> find some cheap boards out there but I am not sure if I could burn
> something like a 32-bit RISC soft core on that. I mean how many logic
> blocks (for example of the Xilinx architecture) would be needed for a
> project like this, assuming that it is of the size of an OpenSPARC?
> Could you suggest me a cheap board (up to $400) with some good features
> and maybe an FPGA capable of hosting a good-sized core. Also good
> features would be VGA,PS/2,ethernet. Thanks
>
> Best regards
> GM

OpenSPARC is truly huge, so it may not fit into any board below $400
budget (unless it is special university discount board)
ok, i take it back, even with educational pricing the board cost $750

xilinx s3 500 is enough for 32 bit cores/base desing, but something
with s3 1000+ size is better if you some more peripheral features

now, it depends how quickly do you want the board, if i would be
buying a new FPGA eval board, i would defenetly
wait til the Spartan-6 evaluation boards are available (i know when
they have been promised to be ready but
can not tell this before the info comes public), ok, i can say that it
probably may fit your desired deadline
to wait the spartan-6 board. as the new technologies make the LUT/$
ratio better there are chances you
get more LUTs for the $ spend on the eval board. There are some other
considerations why it makes sense
to get an Spartan-6 or Virtex-6 based board :)

Antti










Article: 137861
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Ehsan <ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 06:16:25 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Feb 1, 1:02=A0pm, Matthew Hicks <mdhic...@uiuc.edu> wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> > I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
> > pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
> > aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
> > some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
> > signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
> > clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
> > fan-out (probably something around 1500).
>
> Can you anticipate this freeze?
>
> > Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
> > experience?
>
> > BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
> > consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
> > choose either to use or not to use?
>
> It will probably consume routing resources.
>
> ---Matthew Hicks

Mathew,
No, the freeze cannot be anticipated. Actually, the output of the
pipeline would be connected to a FIFO and once the FIFO is full the
pipe should be halted. The data within the stages should not be lost.
However, we can change the pipeline design so that the number of
working cycles are known. I mean, we can wait until the FIFO becomes
empty and then start writing to it. In the mean time, there would be
no FIFO reads until it gets Ful. Therefore, the number of working
cycles are known, i.e. the size of the FIFO.

Article: 137862
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Ehsan <ehsan.hosseini@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 06:33:51 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Feb 1, 2:26=A0pm, Peter Alfke <al...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On Jan 31, 8:34=A0pm, Ehsan <ehsan.hosse...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hi,
>
> > I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
> > pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
> > aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
> > some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
> > signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
> > clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
> > fan-out (probably something around 1500).
>
> > Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
> > experience?
>
> > BTW, Will using the clock-enable signal of FFs affect the amount of
> > consumed resources? Or they are simply built-in features that we can
> > choose either to use or not to use?
>
> Ehsan, you did not mention the clock frequency, only the high fan-out
> of 1500.
> You can gate the clock, with the enable input to the global clock
> buffer/multiplexer.
> Seems like a better solution to me.
> Peter Alfke- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
Peter,
The clock would be at say 100 MHz, and the FPGA is virtex4 FX100 speed
grade -10. I've not tried clock gating so far. But, I was thinking of
something similar, using the clock resources for the global ce. Since
they are routed all over the chip and are low skew, they might help.

Article: 137863
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Jonathan Bromley <jonathan.bromley@MYCOMPANY.com>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:35:57 +0000
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:34:56 -0800 (PST), Ehsan wrote:

>I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
>pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
>aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
>some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
>signals of those registers and then control the pipleline using this
>clock_enable signal. However, I'm affraid about that control signal's
>fan-out (probably something around 1500).
>
>Do you think it's a good design practice? Any suggestions or similar
>experience?

From a later post it seems you're stalling the pipe because
of back-pressure from its output (sink) FIFO.  I agree that it
seems pretty ugly to do this by propagating a _combinational_
signal all the way back up the pipe, when you've taken so 
much trouble to make each stage _registered_ (by pipelining)
in the forward direction.

One possible solution is to provide a 1-place holding buffer
(effectively a 1-deep FIFO) every few stages.  Having the
holding buffer there means that you can now register the
back-pressure "freeze" signal, introducing a cycle of latency
in the freeze operation.  This costs an additional data 
register, but you don't need one at every stage - just often 
enough to alleviate the fanout issues you describe.  I suspect 
roughly one buffer per 5 pipe stages is about the right 
compromise, but that is very much a guess.

This arrangement also introduces a chain of registers into
the freeze signal's path, which is likely to make it far
easier for the tools to deal with any large fanout issues
that may arise.

One final point: Introducing these holding buffers along
the pipe effectively gives the whole pipe some FIFO 
behaviour.  That may mean that you don't need the pipe's
output FIFO at all, which could be another useful resource
trade-off.  Obviously a full-dress FIFO localised at the
end of the pipe will be implemented in blockRAM, whereas
the holding buffers will burn up logic cells, so this
probably isn't a real win in practice.
-- 
Jonathan Bromley, Consultant

DOULOS - Developing Design Know-how
VHDL * Verilog * SystemC * e * Perl * Tcl/Tk * Project Services

Doulos Ltd., 22 Market Place, Ringwood, BH24 1AW, UK
jonathan.bromley@MYCOMPANY.com
http://www.MYCOMPANY.com

The contents of this message may contain personal views which 
are not the views of Doulos Ltd., unless specifically stated.

Article: 137864
Subject: Rotate video
From: "Wiljan" <wiljan@post8.fjern.tele.dk>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 16:08:08 +0100
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Hi

I have the Cyclon III dev kit as well the Bitec composite video in / VGA out 
and DVI in/out boards
Using the Quartus II and Nios both v 8.1.
I have the sample code up running and can do some modification to the code 
and move and mirror the video

Now I realy need to rotate the video signal 90 degree....  and I'm a bit out 
of ideas
Please have a look at
http://www.alteraforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4457
so you can see what I want to obtain....
I would be very happy for a hint to succes to rotate the video...
Perhaps a HDL code to copy / rotate video from one part of the DDR2 ram to 
another without taking all the resources

Best regards
Wiljan 


Article: 137865
Subject: Re: Actel CoreABC not working in Libero 8.5
From: john_griessen <john@foseda.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 07:45:59 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Jan 31, 1:39=A0pm, Antti <Antti.Luk...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 31, 8:53=A0pm, Antti <Antti.Luk...@googlemail.com> wrote:

> the problem seems to be that the minimum number of APB slaves is 2 !

What is it like using LIbero with CoreABC?  Do they offer small low
cost packages?

John Griessen

Article: 137866
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: hal-usenet@ip-64-139-1-69.sjc.megapath.net (Hal Murray)
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:48:14 -0600
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>

>Could you create a high watermark signal in the FIFO when there is
>room for around 4 more words in the FIFO? If so you will have plenty
>of time to propagate a pipelined "clock enable" signal to your
>datapath with a moderate amount of fan-out for every level of
>pipelining in your CE signal.

Most FIFOs have an almost-full signal.  It's needed for things
like this.

-- 
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.


Article: 137867
Subject: Re: Actel CoreABC not working in Libero 8.5
From: Antti <Antti.Lukats@googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 07:55:35 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
On Feb 1, 5:45=A0pm, john_griessen <j...@foseda.com> wrote:
> On Jan 31, 1:39=A0pm, Antti <Antti.Luk...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 31, 8:53=A0pm, Antti <Antti.Luk...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > the problem seems to be that the minimum number of APB slaves is 2 !
>
> What is it like using LIbero with CoreABC? =A0Do they offer small low
> cost packages?
>
> John Griessen

Hi

I am writing User manual (reference designs section!) for the FPGA-
Stamp
http://trioflex.com/index.php?option=3Dcom_content&task=3Dview&id=3D22&Item=
id=3D26

i am surprised how nice the Libero has become, the smart design is
really nice thing for quick wiring

one example that i made, CoreABC+CorePWM with small program that set
the LED PWM intensity
and loops and changes it, that takes

249 logic cells, with code implemented as hard rom in logic
sure it only 5 instructions and most of the stuff is optimized away
still the CoreABC is pretty much useable similarly to PicoBlaze

Antti






Article: 137868
Subject: Re: Selecting a starter FPGA board
From: gm <gm@nomail.com>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:00:40 +0200
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>

> now, it depends how quickly do you want the board, if i would be
> buying a new FPGA eval board, i would defenetly
> wait til the Spartan-6 evaluation boards are available (i know when
> they have been promised to be ready but
> can not tell this before the info comes public), ok, i can say that it
> probably may fit your desired deadline
> to wait the spartan-6 board. as the new technologies make the LUT/$
> ratio better there are chances you
> get more LUTs for the $ spend on the eval board. There are some other
> considerations why it makes sense
> to get an Spartan-6 or Virtex-6 based board :)
> 
> Antti
> 

I am not in a rush (this is not job-related, it is more for practice and 
as a hobby) so I can wait and maybe save money for getting something 
better. Until then I could do some practice with VHDL simulations. So, I 
think I am going to follow your advice Antti! Thank you Antti and Glen 
for your advices

Best Regards
GM

Article: 137869
Subject: Re: Rotate video
From: Jon Beniston <jon@beniston.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 09:28:10 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>

> I would be very happy for a hint to succes to rotate the video...

Just flip your monitor on its side

Article: 137870
Subject: Spartan 3A Starter Kit Comm Problem
From: "TTX" <no@spam.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 14:01:53 -0500
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Hi,

I am seeing the following error when trying to configure my Spartan 3A/3AN 
eval board using ISE 10.1

// *** BATCH CMD : ReadIdcode -p 1
INFO:iMPACT:583 - '1': The idcode read from the device does not match the 
idcode in the bsdl File.
INFO:iMPACT:1578 - '1':  Device IDCODE : 
00000100010001010000000100100110
INFO:iMPACT:1579 - '1': Expected IDCODE: 
00000010001000101000000010010011

It appears to be an extra shift and I thought this may be the USB or signal 
integrity to blame. However, I can get the following info (with no problem) 
using the Cable Setup utility (Output -> Cable Set-up):

Checking cable driver.
 Driver file xusbdfwu.sys found.
 Driver version: src=1027, dest=1027.
 Driver windrvr6.sys version = 8.1.1.0. WinDriver v8.11 Jungo (c) 1997 - 
2006 Build Date: Oct 16 2006 X86 32bit SYS 12:35:07, version = 811.
 Cable PID = 0008.
 Max current requested during enumeration is 74 mA.
Type = 0x0004.
 Cable Type = 3, Revision = 0.
 Setting cable speed to 6 MHz.
Cable connection established.
Firmware version = 1303.
File version of D:/Xilinx/10.1/ISE/data/xusb_xlp.hex = 1303.
Firmware hex file version = 1303.
PLD file version = 0012h.
 PLD version = 0012h.

So it looks like the USB communications is OK. Can anyone give a pointer to 
what may be wrong? I have followed the documentation (Spartan-3A/3AN Starter 
Kit Board User Guide)  and it looks like its set up properly for a USB 
download. The Demo program is working well (LED's flashing user screen 
displaying demo message).

Thanks for your attention,

Mike 



Article: 137871
Subject: Re: Heavily pipelined design
From: Mike Treseler <mtreseler@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:25:50 -0800
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Ehsan wrote:

> I'm trying to implement a design on the Xilinx FPGA which is heavily
> pipelined, let say 50 stages, and each stage has a data width of
> aorund 30 bits. Now, I want to halt the pipeline or "freeze" it at
> some instances. One way would be to tie up all the clock enable
> signals of those registers and then control the pipeline using this
> clock_enable signal. However, I'm afraid about that control signal's
> fan-out (probably something around 1500).

What if you just clock disabled the last stage?

    -- Mike Treseler

Article: 137872
Subject: Re: Selecting a starter FPGA board
From: Mike Treseler <mtreseler@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:30:23 -0800
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
gm wrote:

> I am not in a rush (this is not job-related, it is more for practice and 
> as a hobby) so I can wait and maybe save money for getting something 
> better. Until then I could do some practice with VHDL simulations.

An excellent idea.
If you can write synchronous code and verify it
with a vhdl testbench, you will be ahead of the game,
whatever you decide to do.

  -- Mike Treseler


Article: 137873
Subject: Re: Selecting a starter FPGA board
From: John Adair <g1@enterpoint.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 11:47:06 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Antti

I don't think any boards supporting the next families will be
available generally for a some time but tomorrow might tell us
different. I expect we will be one the first to have such a product
but that's not giving anything away.

Meanwhile it's worth pointing out to Euro and Dollar countries our
products are now much cheaper due to our currency and $400 goes a long
way. I would think we stand a chance of possibly doing something under
US$400 that might do an OpenSparc. It's more a question of whether the
full ISE is needed or Webpack can be used. Do you have a size for
OpenSparc?

John Adair
Enterpoint Ltd.



On 1 Feb, 12:40, Antti <Antti.Luk...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 1, 11:27=A0am, gm <g...@nomail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi to all
>
> > I haven't touched FPGAs or VHDL since the university years so I was
> > thinking to get a starter board in order to get back to the path. I did
> > find some cheap boards out there but I am not sure if I could burn
> > something like a 32-bit RISC soft core on that. I mean how many logic
> > blocks (for example of the Xilinx architecture) would be needed for a
> > project like this, assuming that it is of the size of an OpenSPARC?
> > Could you suggest me a cheap board (up to $400) with some good features
> > and maybe an FPGA capable of hosting a good-sized core. Also good
> > features would be VGA,PS/2,ethernet. Thanks
>
> > Best regards
> > GM
>
> OpenSPARC is truly huge, so it may not fit into any board below $400
> budget (unless it is special university discount board)
> ok, i take it back, even with educational pricing the board cost $750
>
> xilinx s3 500 is enough for 32 bit cores/base desing, but something
> with s3 1000+ size is better if you some more peripheral features
>
> now, it depends how quickly do you want the board, if i would be
> buying a new FPGA eval board, i would defenetly
> wait til the Spartan-6 evaluation boards are available (i know when
> they have been promised to be ready but
> can not tell this before the info comes public), ok, i can say that it
> probably may fit your desired deadline
> to wait the spartan-6 board. as the new technologies make the LUT/$
> ratio better there are chances you
> get more LUTs for the $ spend on the eval board. There are some other
> considerations why it makes sense
> to get an Spartan-6 or Virtex-6 based board :)
>
> Antti


Article: 137874
Subject: MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Mp3) Encoder and Decoder
From: FredrikH <fredrik.holmsten@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 1 Feb 2009 11:47:42 -0800 (PST)
Links: << >>  << T >>  << A >>
Hi,

I recently started to look for an mp3 encoding and decoding IP, but to
my surprise I cannot find anything suitable or anything at all for
that matter.

By various reasons I=92m kind of stuck to the Xilinx range of FPGAs so I
naturally started out by having a look at their cores and 3rd party
cores listed at their webpage, but there are only full blown MPEG-2
and MPEG-4 cores and I only want an MPEG-1 Layer 3 core.

I also had a look at opencores.org, but that search was also
fruitless. So, is it really that bad? Is there nothing to buy or at
least start from?

Regards
Fredrik



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