this week was a very frustrating one, full of mysteries and brain teasers… I spent the first few days trying to get the compiler to compile some error code,and get the error message . The challenge was without using shell commands. This lasted for a day or more before I figured it out, but at the end I ended up using shell commands as the code I produce was very risky and may crush the my application. After that , Read more
The goal of this month is to get everything in the project working starting with the code the user is going to enter until the final bit stream that can be downloaded to the FPGA. This week has been quite productive. First of all the SOC is complete. I have tested various modular switches differing in the number of devices each accommodates. I have tested switches that can accommodate numbers of devices starting from 2 devices all the way to Read more
Much of the week was spent trying to find out as much as possible about the Xilinx bitstream file formats (.bit). The actual configuration within a bitstream file is encrypted and is not available for public use. The FPGA usually contains the encryption key to be able to run the .bit file and configure itself. So the following information was gather regarding bitstreams, and some of the interesting features about the bitstreams. What is a Xilinx Bitstream? The full internal Read more
After tuns and tuns of reading, my supervisor gave me the green light to start working on my part , the web Interface. in this week, My main task was to implement the Ace editore using C++ webtool kit into the editor web page . With the help of webtool kit and ace documents, I managed to finish this task the very first day! However all my problems started at that point. The next step was to manage to get Read more
Last week, I was only able to verify that the CRC16 feature in the SD card is working. The data will only be written into the SD card when the CRC16 given is correct. If the CRC16 isn’t correct, the SD card will not contain the data in the respective sector and a CRC error will be returned from the SD card and the writing process cannot be continued. The CRC is hardcoded within the code to send the same Read more
Compared to my work the title might be a little too fancy but hopefully our switches will evolve from simple switches to a smart interconnect between the processor and all other system components. Do you remember the second version of the accelerator switch I talked about in my previous blog post? It turned out it’s not a good choice. The reason is that in my implementation I inferred a tri-state buffer inside the design. However, tri-states should only be connected Read more
It was an up and down week of sorts. It didn’t start off but as the week wore on and with some crucial help/advice from the supervisor and colleague, the desired task was achieved, although it is yet to see if it was the best solution to the problem at hand. One important aspect of problem solving that was picked up during the week was the fact that the objective must be clear to be able to solve any problems. Read more
The reason why the Base64 decoder is not working is because the buffer for storing the bit is a bit too short, I changed the buffer into a 32 bits variable so it can store all the 24 bits. After that I found that the if condition which will split the 24 bits into 3 8-bits bytes is not working, I then changed the condition from detecting the the 25th bit which indicates that 24 bits had been shifted into Read more
this week was quite an interesting one I got familiar with my work place. I made some new friends with whom I shared a meal or two together. As for my studies I read through the Webtool Kit tutorials and references , and I managed to code my first project using WT kit. My project is a simple form that takes the user data ,and prompt him/her to send a message to the customer service of our company. At first, Read more
The I2C core made a lot of progress this week. While I was hoping last week not to use a FSM in my slave I couldn’t resist the temptation. My slave have a FSM and is almost 95% ready. The hardest part is the acknowledge part. Not only that the slave need to send acknowledge when the master is writing to it but has to receive acknowledge when it’s writing to the master. Each acknowledge signal has it’s own meaning. Read more