the mbed main and custom SPI code, as well as the Tk/Python, verilog & CPU machine-code-program files, are available via the following link.

there is a defect in the mercurial revision control system - I can't push updates into the same repository - need to use forks

Introduction

A combined project for 'USB Device Programming' and 'Embedded RTOS' classes for UCSC-extension.

Goal

Provide a Tk/Python GUI used for monitoring and control of a toy CPU running in an FPGA.

Features

• GUI-based CPU register read/write.
• GUI-based CPU main-memory read/write.
• GUI-based CPU machine-code file upload/download.
• GUI-controlled lock-step execution of the CPU program.
• GUI-controlled end-to-end fully automatic test.

Implementation

• Tk GUI on a PC host.
• Python programming on a PC host.
• PC host <-> MBED applications board serial-over-USB connection.
• multi-threaded MBED main program using serial-device USB library.
• custom SPI MBED library used to interface with an FPGA.
• verilog-based toy CPU programmed into the FPGA.
• machine-code programming files for the toy CPU programmed into the FPGA.

Indicators

• MBED: the four LEDs are heartbeats for the four threads.
• MBED: the LCD display shows SPI and CPU cumulative clock-counts.

Equipment

• Linux host PC.
• USB cable.
• MBED LPC1768 CPU board.
• MBED application board.
• twisted-pair SPI lines.
• Altera development board.

Tools & Libraries

• Tk & Python interpreters.
• Python serial library.
• MBED compiler.
• MBED libraries.
• Altera Quartus, including use of Signal-Tap.

Link to pdf Presentation

/media/uploads/gatedClock/presentation.pdf

video made before speed improvement

video made before speed improvement

video made before speed improvement