Updated bitfile for Papilio One 500

Due to a miscalculation, the Alpha 4 image for Papilio One 500 would overwrite the FPGA bitfile when you uploaded a sketch, which in turn would cause it to require a new bitfile upload when power cycled. This is now fixed, and I published a new bitfile for it:

http://www.alvie.com/zpuino/download.html

Thanks a lot to the reporter and tester, "dack", who I spoke with on IRC on #gadgetfactory channel (FreeNode).

Alvie

Extreme

ZPUino extreme (the smallest version of it) successfully implemented and tested on FPGA. This core can do 1-cycle operations on many instructions, hence a lot faster than traditional cores. It also features a separate stack/memory, so memory is now mostly free and available for a DMA engine.

It might need a small redesign however, due to slowness of internal Block RAM. Despite timing things went very good. It still needs interrupt support, but should not be very intrusive.

Álvaro

ZPUino going wishbone

ZPUino is going wishbone, from the CPU core to the IO devices.

This will ease addition of new peripherals, like the ones in opencores.

Álvaro

Examples section

I just added a new "Examples" section to the website (http://www.alvie.com/zpuino/examples.html).

There's a single demo there for now, which is meant for S3ESK board only.

I'll notify you all when I add some more examples (like the so awaited WAV player).

Álvaro

Alpha 4 is out

ZPUino Alpha 4 is out.

Release Notes
Programmer/bootloader

* Changed the reset method to BREAK + low speed transfer. This hopefully will allow reset even when RS232 signals are noisy.
* Fix bootloader for simulation, was using deprecated methods.
* Small update for new interrupt controller
* Remove unused syscall file for bootloader

Core

* Refactor interrupt controller. New controller uses edge interrupts, and has two external interrupt lines. Also interrupts are now masked by default.
* GPIO: allow disabling PPS on some GPIO pins, such as those who map directly on board devices.

Boards

* Clock speed was being defined as unsigned long long. This might break inline computations, so changed to unsigned long.
* Place memreg[] in lower memory, so it can be used by bootloader/sketch. Interrupts should work perfectly now (and sketches should be slightly smaller)

Papilio One

* Reorganize papilio one directory to hold different FPGA
* New bitfile for Papilio One based on S3E500

Spartan 3E Evaluation Board

* Add some more IO pins to design, to support accessing LCD and rotary encoder.

Full release notes: Release Notes
Download: Download

ZPU core comparison

I believe I forgot to share this one: It's a comparison between the older core (zpu_core_small), the current core (ZPUino Premium) and the on-the-forge ZPUino Extreme:



Nice, no ?

ZPUino Extreme also features a completely different architecture, but it's not very suitable for multitasking. But falls perfecly in ZPUino niche.

Alvie

Request for examples

Can you provide me what you believe would be good examples to include in ZPUino core ?

I've a few I might publish soon:

* Simple AES256 benchmark
* WAV player from SD card

I'll be expecting your comments (or alternatively, send them to zpuino@alvie.com)

Alvie