Hi All,
I do apologise if my question(s) seem very basic but I am a total newbie to FPGA's.
I do however have quite an extensive programming and electronics background so am willing to learn.
The main reason I stumbled across FPGA's is my love of the MSP430 Microcontroller and the soft-core implementation thats available on OpenCores for it.
I have some "real" MSP430 development hardware here but there is just something fascinating about having something thats so reconfigurable and flexible.
Also of course it can be an MSP430 one moment and a Z80 or whatever the next which is just fascinating.

I have no VHDL/Verilog experience but the language looks reasonably OK to get the hang of so like I say I want to learn.

Anyway on to my question (finlly).............

I really don't know what FPGA board to go for a Papilio or an Altera/Terasic DE1. The Papilio with a Xilinx XC3S500E seems quite interesting and basic for someone just starting out like me.
Before I go ahead and purchase a Papilio that I need to know for sure if the MSP430 core will work on it and how much RAM and ROM could the end device have?
To transfer the project I currently have on real hardware to the OpenMSP430 it would need at least 8K program memory and 8K RAM, hardware multiplier and a UART. I'm not bothered about timers or any other peripherals so would that fit on the Papilio?
Does the OpenMSP430 *need* an external RAM device or can/is that configured as a module within the FPGA?
I notice by looking at the sources there are what appear to be some memory modules included?

Assuming it works would I likely have enough space left to remove the UART and maybe add VGA?

I look forward to any and all comments.

Kind Regards

Lynton

England, UK

Hi Lynton,

Great to hear you're willing to dive in the FPGA world... be careful, it can be addictive :-)

So, let me give you my take on your questions.

1) I really don't know what FPGA board to go for a Papilio or an Altera/Terasic DE1

I personally develop on a XC3S200 FPGA and the openMSP430 fits easily in it.
The XC3S500 having 2.5 more system gates, you will even have enough place to put several openMSP430 and Z80 cores in parallel ;-)
Concerning the available on-chip RAM, according to Xilinx (http://www.xilinx.com/support/documentation/data_sheets/ds312.pdf), the XC3S500 contains 360kbits block RAMs (i.e. 45kB). So your memory requirements would be okay as well.

The Altera DE1 board is also quite popular and it runs a Cyclone II 2C20 from Altera. A quick glance at the spec (http://www.altera.com/literature/hb/cyc2/cyc2_cii5v1_01.pdf) will show you that the openMSP430 fits easily in it (it requires ~2200 LEs including hardware multiplier and serial debug interface). On the memory side, it comes with 28kB on-chip memory.

2) Does the OpenMSP430 *need* an external RAM device or can/is that configured as a module within the FPGA?

The openMSP430 as such doesn't come with the memories. The reason for this is that while the oMSP is a soft-core which is synthesizable for any kind of FPGA or ASIC, memories are technology dependent and must be provided by the FPGA manufacturer (or foundry in the case of an ASIC). However, both Xilinx and Altera provide utilities to generate RAM blocks.

3) Assuming it works would I likely have enough space left to remove the UART and maybe add VGA?

Easy... you probably will have enough place for 20 of them :-P

I hope I addressed most of your questions.

Best regards, and have fun.
Olivier

Hi Olivier,
Looking at what you have said it does sound very much like the Papilio will do what I need at least initially.
I'm now going to download the ISE WebPack software so I can find my way around it before I order the Papilio board.

You most certainly have addressed all my questions so thanks very much for the very speedy response.

I'll be ordering the board in the next few weeks so no doubt there'll be some more questions arriving on the forum :-)

I'll try to do my own research first in order to answer the quesions though............

Kind Regards

Lynton

England, UK

FWIW, you can always use the free editions of the tools to try synthesize a project, without the actual device, to see if it fits.