Embedded System Design Summer 2005, NCTU

General Information

Lectures are from 13:30 to 15:00 in EE 113. Labs are from 15:00 to 16:30 in EE 616. The lab will be open after 16:30, but the instructor and lab assistants may not be available off-hours.

Do the labs in groups of three. Project groups should be three students or more.

Staff

Overview

Embedded system architecture and programming. I/O, analog and digital interfacing, and peripherals. Weekly laboratory sessions and term project on design of a microprocessor-based embedded system including at least one custom peripheral. Knowledge of C programming and digital logic required. Lab required.

The goal of this class is to introduce you to issues in hardware/software interfacing, practical microprocessor-based system design issues such as bus protocols and device drivers, and practical digital hardware design using modern logic synthesis tools. You will put all of this to use in the lab where you will be given the opportunity to implement, using a combination of C and the VHDL hardware description langauge, a small embedded system.

The focus of the course will be a lab, which will be in two parts. During the first half of the class, teams will each implement the same ``canned'' project designed by the instructor and be given substantial guidance. This project is meant as an opportunity for you to learn the development tools and basic concepts. During the second half, each team will design and implement a comparable project of their own with guidance from the instructor and TAs.

Possible second projects include:

• Video game
• Digital picture frame (JPEG decoder, VGA out)
• Simple video effects processor (e.g., solarization, inversion)
• Video Display Terminal

Prerequisites

You must understand digital logic design and C programming. Prior experience with hardware description languages, FPGAs, or embedded processors is not required.

Tutorials

• Writing VHDL for RTL Synthesis: A small tutorial with examples of VHDL code.

Schedule

Date	Lecture	Notes	Due
August 1	Embedded Systems
August 2	Low-Level C Programming		Lab 1
August 3	HW/SW Interfaces
August 4	VHDL 1		Lab 2
August 5	Typhoon Day
August 8	VHDL 2
August 9	Video		Lab 3
August 10	Video Controller 1		Project Proposal
August 11	Video Controller 2		Lab 4
August 12	The OPB
August 15	Serial Communication		Lab 5
August 16	Memory
August 17	Processors, FPGAs, and ASICs
August 18	Hardware/software tradeoffs
August 19	(no lecture)		75% Demo
August 22	The PS/2 Keyboard
August 23	Sprite Graphics
August 24	Project Demonstrations

The Project

You'll perform a design-it-yourself project in the second half of the class. The deliverables are:

1. A short project proposal describing in broad terms what you plan to build and how you plan to build it
2. An early demo of your project. It should be roughly 75% working and be showing signs of life. This is to make sure you are making reasonable forward progress.
3. A presentation on your project to me

Project groups should be two or three students.

Projects

Chess: Electronic chess game Proposal    Final Report    Project Files    Sheng-Kuo Lu (呂聖國)     Chun Huang (黃俊)     Jang-Yuan Kao (高丈淵)

Car: Crazy Car Video Game Proposal    Final Report    Project Files    Chien-Chih Liu (劉建志)     Ying-Der Lee (李盈德)

Tetris: Tetris Video Game Proposal    Final Report    Project Files    Conrad Chih-Kang Lin (林志康)     David Sun (孫樹元)

BattleSnake: Battle Snake Video Game Proposal    Final Report    Project Files    Ming-Ju Wu (吳明儒)     Way-Cheng Sun (孫偉程)

Sokoban: Sokoban-like Video Game Proposal    Project Files    Shih-Chun Yu (施俊宇)     Lu-Yi Chi (呂亦琦)

JPEG: JPEG Photo Viewer Proposal    Project Files    Sean Tang (唐學用)     Steve Chiao (喬廣道)     Steel Yang (楊忠傑)     Tzung-Han Tsai (蔡宗翰)

Xilinx Documentation

• XST User Guide: Describes the XST synthesis system and how to write HDL code
• Development System Reference Guide: Describes the various tools that come after synthesis, e.g., place-and-route, technology mapping, and BitGen
• Libraries Guide: Describes built-in library components such as I/O pads and other primitives.
• Constraints Guide: Describes, among many other things, the .ucf file format for specifying pin locations.
• Embedded System Tools Guide: describes platgen; libgen; and .mhs, .mpd, and .mss files
• OPB tutorial: How to interface to the Microblaze bus
• User Core Templates Reference Guide: How to write a new peripheral
• Processor IP User Guide: Describes the On-Chip Peripheral Bus (OPB) and peripherals, both hardware and software
• Xilinx Device Drivers Documentation: Describes, among others, the UART Lite
• MicroBlaze Processor Reference Guide: Describes the 32-bit softcore processor, its bus, instructions, and ABI

OPB documents

• On-Chip Peripheral Bus Architecture Specifications: a complete description of the bus by IBM, its inventor

Digilent Board Manual and Peripheral Datasheets

• Digilent Spartan-3 Starter Kit Board User Guide: schematics and pinouts of the board
• Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA Family complete datasheet
• ISSI IS61LV25616AL 256K X 16 Static RAM Two of these chips are on the bottom of the board.

Nintendo NES Information

• Ueda et al. TV Game System Having Reduced Memory Needs. United States Patent \#4,824,106. April 25, 1989.

Links

• CSEE 4840 from Spring 2005
• CSEE 4840 from Spring 2004
• Web resources for Vahid and Givargis
• VHDL examples
• Other VHDL resources
• Ken Shepard's EE 4340 class (2003)
• Ken Shepard's EE 4340 class (1999)