Xilinx has a number of boards, and for Xilinx FPGAs there's also Digilent, Avnet, Xess and many others. I would look out for a keyboard connector, and a display module. You'll want a board with a bit more than a few switches and LEDs. There's still a great many too choose from, mainly different in the extras on the board. If you go for Xilinx I would pick a Spartan, maybe a Spartan-6, the Virtex is already too high-end IMO. You need to have an idea of what FPGA you'll need to select one. The limitations compared to more advanced versions of the software shouldn't bother you at this time. If you would choose for Xilinx, it has its ISE WebPACK Design Software, which is free (large download at 3.4GB). Which one you choose is not that important, both have enough different parts to satisfy your needs. Altera and Xilinx are the big players, and both have their believers. You need a development system for a specific manufacturer. Pick a part which has some extra RAM, which you'll need to execute programs on your CPU. This should give you an idea what parts are suitable for your design. When you synthesize a design the synthesizer should give you a report on the resources used, like number of gates and RAM. You also don't say what simulator you're using. I presume it's the large number of different devices on offer. But you're not very clear what it is that makes your head spin. Yes, the FPGA is definitely your next step.
ALTERA QUARTUS II WEBPACK VERSION 13 MAC OS X
Also a note, I am on Mac OS X but I have a Window's XP box that I can plug in if I absolutely have to.Ĭongrats on your CPU design.
ALTERA QUARTUS II WEBPACK VERSION 13 HOW TO
Once I know what direction to go in, I can crack the books and figure out all I need to know about how to get there.
Am I barking up the wrong tree? Basically, I'm looking for a plain English description of what the next step is for a guy with a functional schematic of a CPU. I know that I will have to make a lot of adjustments in the input/output arena (the real world being different to the simulation environment) and have discovered that I did my design entirely in a program that doesn't export netlists or HDL code so all I really have is a schematic.īut, assuming that I somehow get to a point where I do have a netlist or HDL code of my design, what is my next step to get it into silicon? So far from what I've read it looks like FPGA's are my solution, but looking at the Xilinx and Altera websites makes my head spin. Now I've just started looking into the possibility of putting it into silicon by way of an FPGA. The final product of this is a functional 16 bit CPU that works exactly as designed in a simulator. I recently went on a long voyage of self-teaching logic design.