Projecto 1: síntese e implementação de circuitos digitais reconfiguráveis dinamicamente

Abstract

The paper presents the results of the project proposed to the authors (who are the 4th year students of LECT) and shows how the specified problem has been solved. The description of the project and the basic requirements have been considered in the paper [1]. According to the specification of the problem it was necessary to design a simple system implemented in hardware and in software. The system has to perform various operations over Boolean vectors with the size 24 bits. The number of feasible operations can be infinite and the number of particular operations implemented in the system has been fixed. Customizing of the operations has to be achieved through a modifiability of the system functionality.Hardware part has been realized in FPGA XC4010XL of Xilinx linked to the host PC computer through a parallel port. This part includes the following basic components: interface with PC computer; execution unit that enables us to carry out the specified operations over Boolean vectors; control unit with dynamically modifiable functionality that permits to customize operations over Boolean vectors; reconfiguration handler, which allows to change the functionality of the control unit from the host computer. Software part has been implemented in a C++ program running on the host computer. It provides the required data for the specified operations and permits to modify the set of operations from the host computer through the parallel port. The latter is achieved by modifying the control unit functionality.