ECE 448 FPGA and ASIC Design with VHDL Spring 2011

ECE 448 Team Course Instructor: Kris Gaj Lab Instructors (TAs): Monday section: Mark Chaney Tuesday section: Jeremy Kelly Wednesday & Thursday sections + quiz grading: Ambarish Vyas

ECE 448 Team – Division of Tasks Course Instructor – Primary Responsibilities - Lectures - Preparing quizzes and exams, grading exams - Coordination of work on development of new experiments - Instructions for the lab experiments - Coordination of work done by the TAs - Enforcing consistent policies and grading standards - Mid-semester student satisfaction survey - Resolving conflicts and providing feedback to the TAs - Holding office hours

ECE 448 Team – Division of Tasks Lab Instructors (TAs) – Primary Responsibilities - Teaching hands-on sessions on how to use software, hardware and testing equipment needed for experiments - Introductions to the lab experiments - Grading student demonstrations and reports - Holding office hours - Development and testing of new lab experiments

You should do your best to attend all lab meetings of the section you are registered for If you have missed a meeting of your section please attend a meetings of any other section but give preference in access to the lab computers to the students attending their own section All lab assignment demonstrations need to be done in the presence of your TA, and can be done exclusively during the class time of your section You are welcome to attend any of the multiple office hour sessions ECE 448 Section Assignment Rules

Course Hours Lecture: Tuesday, Thursday 5:55-7:10 PM, Enterprise Hall, room 276 Lab Sessions: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 7:20-10:00 PM, The Nguyen Engineering Bldg., room 3208 Lab sessions start this week!!! It is very important that you attend the first lab session!

Tentative Office Hours Saturday, 12:00-1:00 PM, Ambarish Vyas, Engineering 3208 Monday, 6:00-7:00 PM, Jeremy Kelly, Engineering 3208 Monday, 10:00-11:00 PM, Mark Chaney, Engineering 3208 Tuesday, 1:00-2:00 PM, Ambarish Vyas, Engineering 3208 Tuesday, 4:30-5:30 PM, Kris Gaj, Engineering 3225 Wednesday, 1:00-2:00 PM, Ambarish Vyas, Engineering 3208 Thursday, 4:30-5:30 PM, Kris Gaj, Engineering 3225 You are welcome to attend all office hour sessions! You can direct your questions regarding lab assignments to all lab instructors and myself.

Lab Access Rules and Behavior Code Please refer to Computer Engineering Lab website and in particular to Access rules & behavior code

Grading criteria First part of the semester (before the Spring break) Second part of the semester (after the Spring break) Lab experiments - Part I 20% Final exam 25% Lab experiments - Part II 20% Midterm exam for the lecture: 10% Midterm exam for the lab: 15% Quizzes & homework: 5%

Tentative Grading Scheme for the Labs (the exact point amounts may still change) Lab 1: Developing Effective Testbenches – 4 points Lab 2: Implementing Combinational Logic in VHDL – 5 points Lab 3: Implementing Sequential Logic in VHDL – 5 points Lab 4: State machines – 6 points Lab 5: VGA display – 6 points Lab 6: DSP & FPGA Embedded Resources – 6 points Lab 7: PicoBlaze & Serial Communication – 6 points Lab 7a: Logic Analyzer – 2 points

Penalties and Bonus Points Penalties: one-week delay: 1/3 of points i.e., you can earn max. 4 out of 6 points two-week delay: 2/3 of points i.e., you can earn max. 2 out of 6 points Bonus points: Majority of labs will have opportunities for earning bonus points by doing additional tasks

Flexibility in the Second Part of the Semester Lab 5: VGA display(2 weeks) – 6 points Lab 6: DSP & FPGA Embedded Resources (2 weeks) – 6 points Lab 7: PicoBlaze & Serial Communication (3 weeks) – 6 points Lab 7a: Logic Analyzer (in class) – 2 points Lab 5: VGA display(3 weeks) – 6 points Lab 6: DSP & FPGA Embedded Resources (4 weeks) – 6 points Lab 7a: Logic Analyzer (in class) – 2 points Schedule A: Schedule B: Total: 20 points Total: 14 points

Required Textbook Pong P. Chu, FPGA Prototyping by VHDL Examples: Xilinx Spartan-3 Version, Wiley-Interscience, Stephen Brown and Zvonko Vranesic, Fundamentals of Digital Logic with VHDL Design, McGraw-Hill, 3 rd or 2 nd Edition Recommended Textbook current ECE 331/332 book

Basic Textbook Part I Basic Digital Circuits - combinational - sequential - state machines and ASM charts Part II I/O Modules - serial communication - keyboard - mouse - video Part III PicoBlaze Microcontroller - block diagram - instruction set - I/O interface - interrupts

ECE 331 ECE 332 ECE 445  C ECE 447  C ECE 448 Undergraduate Computer Engineering Courses ECE 492 ECE 493 BS EE BS CpE Color code:  C

VHDL: - writing synthesizable RTL level code in VHDL - writing testbenches FPGAs: - architecture of FPGA devices - embedded resources (memories, multipliers, DSP units) - tools for the computer-aided design with FPGAs - current FPGA families & future trends Topics ECE 448, FPGA and ASIC Design with VHDL

Applications: - basics of computer arithmetic - applications from communications, cryptography, digital signal processing, etc. - FPGA boards - I/O modules (VGA controller, serial communication modules) - microprocessor board–FPGA board interfaces (USB, PCIe) High-level ASIC Design: - standard cell implementation approach - logic synthesis tools - differences between FPGA & standard-cell ASIC design flow New trends: - microprocessors embedded in FPGAs (PicoBlaze, ARM) - using high-level programming languages to design hardware Platforms & Interfaces:

Tasks of the course Advanced course on digital system design with VHDL Comprehensive introduction to FPGA & front-end ASIC technology Testing equipment - writing VHDL code for synthesis - design using finite state machines and algorithmic state machines - testbenches - hardware: Xilinx FPGAs, Altera FPGAs, Library of standard ASIC cells - software: VHDL simulators Synthesis tools Implementation Tools - oscilloscopes - logic analyzer

VHDL for Specification VHDL for Simulation VHDL for Synthesis

Levels of design description Algorithmic level Register Transfer Level Logic (gate) level Circuit (transistor) level Physical (layout) level Level of description most suitable for synthesis

Register Transfer Level (RTL) Design Description Combinational Logic Combinational Logic Registers …

VHDL Design Styles Components and interconnects structural VHDL Design Styles dataflow Concurrent statements behavioral Registers, counters, etc. State machines Sequential statements Subset most suitable for synthesis Testbenches

Testbench Environment TB Processes Generating Stimuli Design Under Test (DUT) Stimuli All DUT Inputs Simulated Outputs

World of Integrated Circuits Integrated Circuits Full-Custom ASICs Semi-Custom ASICs Reconfigurable CPLDFPGA

Block RAMs Configurable Logic Blocks I/O Blocks What is an FPGA? Block RAMs

designs must be sent for expensive and time consuming fabrication in semiconductor foundry bought off the shelf and reconfigured by designers themselves Two competing implementation approaches ASIC Application Specific Integrated Circuit FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array designed all the way from behavioral description to physical layout no physical layout design; design ends with a bitstream used to configure a device

FPGAs vs. ASICs ASICs FPGAs High performance Off-the-shelf Short time to the market Low development costs Reconfigurability Low power Low cost (but only in high volumes)

FPGA Design process (1) Design and implement a simple unit permitting to speed up encryption with RC5-similar cipher with fixed key set on 8031 microcontroller. Unlike in the experiment 5, this time your unit has to be able to perform an encryption algorithm by itself, executing 32 rounds….. Library IEEE; use ieee.std_logic_1164.all; use ieee.std_logic_unsigned.all; entity RC5_core is port( clock, reset, encr_decr: in std_logic; data_input: in std_logic_vector(31 downto 0); data_output: out std_logic_vector(31 downto 0); out_full: in std_logic; key_input: in std_logic_vector(31 downto 0); key_read: out std_logic; ); end AES_core; Specification (Lab Assignments) VHDL description (Your Source Files) Functional simulation Post-synthesis simulation Synthesis On-paper hardware design (Block diagram & ASM chart)

FPGA Design process (2) Implementation Configuration Timing simulation On chip testing

Simulation Tools

FPGA Synthesis Tools

architecture MLU_DATAFLOW of MLU is signal A1:STD_LOGIC; signal B1:STD_LOGIC; signal Y1:STD_LOGIC; signal MUX_0, MUX_1, MUX_2, MUX_3: STD_LOGIC; begin A1<=A when (NEG_A='0') else not A; B1<=B when (NEG_B='0') else not B; Y<=Y1 when (NEG_Y='0') else not Y1; MUX_0<=A1 and B1; MUX_1<=A1 or B1; MUX_2<=A1 xor B1; MUX_3<=A1 xnor B1; with (L1 & L0) select Y1<=MUX_0 when "00", MUX_1 when "01", MUX_2 when "10", MUX_3 when others; end MLU_DATAFLOW; VHDL description Circuit netlist Logic Synthesis

FPGA Implementation After synthesis the entire implementation process is performed by FPGA vendor tools

Design Process control from Active-HDL

Top Level ASIC Digital Design Flow RTL Design Place+Route Physical Verification Synthesis Design Inception Design Complete Macro Development

ASIC Simulation Tools

ASIC Synthesis Tools

Xilinx FPGA Tools Aldec Active-HDL (IDE) Xilinx XST & Synopsys Synplify Pro Xilinx ISE Design Suite ECE Labs Mentor Graphics ModelSim SE Xilinx XST & Synopsys Synplify Pro Xilinx ISE Design Suite (IDE) Aldec Active-HDL Design Flow Xilinx ISE Design Flow simulation synthesis implementation

Xilinx FPGA Tools Aldec Active-HDL Student Edition (IDE) Xilinx XST (restricted) Home Aldec Active-HDL Design Flow Xilinx ISE Design Flow simulation synthesis implementation Xilinx ISE WebPACK (restricted) Mentor Graphics ModelSim PE Student Edition Xilinx XST (restricted) Xilinx ISE WebPACK (IDE) (restricted)

Digilent Basys2 FPGA Board

FPGA available on the board Xilinx Spartan 3E-100, XC3S100E FPGA 100,000 equivalent logic gates 960 CLB slices Programmable Interconnects Configurable Logic Block slices (CLB slices) Block RAMs 72 kbits of memory in block RAMs

Digital system design technologies coverage in the CpE & EE programs at GMU Microprocessors ASICs FPGAs ECE 445 ECE 447 ECE 586 ECE 681 ECE 448 ECE 511 ECE 611 ECE 431 Computer Organization Single Chip Microcomputers FPGA and ASIC Design with VHDL Digital Circuit Design Microprocessors Advanced Microprocessors Digital Integrated Circuits VLSI Design for ASICs ECE 545 Digital System Design with VHDL ECE 645 Computer Arithmetic

Why ECE 448 is a challenging course? need to “relearn” VHDL need to learn new tools need to perform practical experiments time needed to complete experiments

Difficulties (based on a student survey) finding time to do the labs - 15 learning VHDL – 2 getting used to software – 1

Self-evaluation (based on a student survey) 8 – worse than expected 16 – as well as expected 3 – better than expected

Why is this course worth taking? VHDL for synthesis: one of the most sought-after skills knowledge of state-of-the-art tools used in the industry knowledge of the modern FPGA & ASIC technologies knowledge of state-of-the-art testing equipment design portfolio that can be used during job interviews unique knowledge and practical skills that make you competitive on the job market