Subversion Repositories pcounter

--
-- * pipelined synchronous pulse counter *
--
-- fast counter for slow-carry architectures
-- non-monotonic counting, value calculable by HDL/CPU
--
-- idea&code by Marek Peca <mp@duch.cz> 08/2012
-- Vyzkumny a zkusebni letecky ustav, a.s. http://vzlu.cz/
-- thanks to Michael Vacek <michael.vacek@vzlu.cz> for testing
--

Pipelined Synchronous Pulse Counter
===================================

is a proposal of binary counter, designed to minimize logic path
length in between flip-flops to one gate (MUX/AND) only, at the
expense of not so straightforward binary counting. The reason for this
design has emerged while using Actel (MicroSemi) ProASIC/IGLOO
architecture, lacking any hardwired support for fast carry.

During our work on Actel FPGAs (basically, 3-LUT & DFF only), we were
aware of following types of faster counters:
- LFSR counter
- Johnson counter
- "RLA counter" (as tailored using Actel's SmartGen core generator)

Johnson due to its O(2^n) (n as number of bits) can not be used for
longer counts; LFSR's are hard to invert (table lookup seems to be
only known method), therefore also impractical for wider counters. RLA
counter is still too slow and complex for wider counters and moderate
speeds (e.g.  > 24bits @ >100MHz).

As a consequence, the proposed counter uses synchronous divide-by-two
blocks, each using 1-bit pipeline and carry by single-clock
pulse. Design is simple and fast, preliminary results from Synplify
and Actel Designer shows 32bits @200MHz feasible.

However, output bit lines are non-proportionaly delayed by discrete
number of clock periods. Therefore, to obtain linear bit word, an
inversion formula needs to be applied. Fortunately, the inversion is
simple (unlike LFSR's), in C (pcount.c):

  for (k = 1; k < n; k++)
    if ((y & ((1<<k)-1)) < k)
      y = y ^ (1<<k);

-- it may be implemented in VHDL core, or within CPU as shown, depending on
application requirements.

Files
=====

pdivtwo.vhdl                    basic building block -- 1-stage pipelined
                                flip-flop
pdchain.vhdl                    counter top-level entity
pcount_tb.vhdl                  GHDL testbench
pcount.c                        C language encoder/decoder of counter bitword
doc/pcounter_4bit_trace.pdf     simulated signals of 4-bit counter
doc/pcounter_sch.pdf            schematic diagram of the counter

Results
=======

Synthesized within larger circuit for Actel ProASIC3E A3PE1500-Std
as 32bit wide counter, typical frequency: 234MHz

Comments?
=========

***
* First, if you find this pretty simple idea to be non-original work
* *please* send me an e-mail with respective pointers; I will then freeze
* the repository, including link to the reference.
***

If you find this idea useful, apply it whenever you want, however,
share your improvements. E.g.:
- (fast) HDL implementation of bitword encode/decode
- preset/reset/match/enable logic

Testimonials (usage/frequency/bits/architecture) are indeed welcome.


--
Greetings by Marek <mp@duch.cz>