I’ve noticed that many of the gadgets that I’ve bought the last couple of years have shifted away from LED blinking to led breathing. Most electronic gizmos contain a status LED whose behavior gives away indications of what’s going on inside of the device.
My electric toothbrush flashes an LED when it’s time to recharge it, and my mobile phone uses the LED to call my attention for a wide variety of reasons.
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an efficient way to control analog electronics from purely digital FPGA pins. Instead of attempting to regulate the analog voltage, PWM rapidly switches on and off the supply current at full power to the analog device. This method gives us precise control over the moving average of energy provided to the consumer device.
Examples of use cases that are good candidates for PWM are audio modulation (speakers), light intensity control (lamps or LEDs),
The ModelSim version that comes with Intel Quartus Prime Lite Edition is a good alternative if you want to try out VHDL simulation on your home computer. The software is available for both Windows and Linux, but Intel only supports Red Hat-based distros like CentOS Linux.
Fortunately, you are just a few hacks away from ModelSim working nicely on your Ubuntu box.
One question that I’ve debated many times over the years is whether it’s OK to use variables for registers in VHDL. It’s safe to say that newbies are more likely to do it than experienced VHDL designers. But is there any merit to that, or is it just a matter of preference?
In this blog post, I will try to shed some light on the issue so that you can make an informed decision about using this design practice.
This tutorial teaches you how to set up an automation server on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) using Jenkins, Xilinx Vivado, and the Git / GitHub source-control management (SCM) system.
Jenkins can be a valuable tool also for FPGA teams. Automating tasks can save your company time and improve the quality of your code. By using automatic build triggers and automated job pipelines, fewer coding errors will go unnoticed.
Many people turn to me for advice regarding their FPGA projects. Often, my answer is not what they expected: have you considered using a microcontroller instead of an FPGA?
I’m running VHDLwhiz, the website dedicated to FPGA design using VHDL. My life revolves around FPGAs, and I’m the biggest proponent of VHDL there is. Why would I say such a thing?
It’s because, for some tasks, an FPGA is overkill.
In this article, I will present a VHDL module that can display a two-digit number on the Pmod SSD: Seven-segment Display from Digilent. The dual 7-segment display is compatible with the Pmod interface, meaning that you can use it without any soldering. It fits into the Pmod connector, which is standard on many FPGA development boards.
VHDL has a built-in pseudo-random generator, but it can only generate floating-point numbers between 0 and 1. Fortunately, you can derive from this any other kind of random data format you should need. Continue reading this article to find out how to produce real or integer values of any range, as well as random std_logic_vector sequences and time values.
There are many ways to create a shift register in VHDL, though not all of them are equal. You can dramatically reduce the number of consumed resources by choosing the right shift register implementation for your needs and FPGA architecture.
This video is an introductory presentation about FPGA and programmable logic technology. I delivered this 45 minutes talk at an event hosted by 7 Peaks Software in Bangkok, Thailand, on November 19th, 2019.
