My hat is off to James...]]> Fri, 29 May 2015 04:09:26 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/499/fpga-prototyping-at-home-1-a-practical-guide It is almost universally accepted by the hobbyists that you can't work with high-density packages at home.  That is entirely incorrect.  I've been assembling and reflowing BGA circuit boards at home for a few years now.  BGAs and 0.5mm-pitch QFPs are well within the realm of a determined amateur. 

This series of articles presents practical information on designing and...]]> Sun, 13 Oct 2013 18:27:30 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/494/windows-xp-and-win32-the-cross-platform-library-of-the-future Over the past decade I often wondered why anyone uses Windows.  It's just so... proprietary.  And pedestrian.  As I grew up my OS of choice went nothing to CPM to DOS (on Apple ][), GEM on Atari ST,  MS-DOS, DOS extenders, Mac OS, Windows NT, Windows XP, Linux...  Now, I again find myself a fan of Windows XP, the platform of the future.  (I am still a fan of bare...]]> Mon, 07 Oct 2013 01:43:49 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/434/a-small-stack-cpu-the-legs Ok, let's make a small stack-based CPU.

I will start where the rubber meets the road - the PC/stack subsystem that I like referring to as the 'legs'. As usual, I will present a design with a twist.

Not having a large design team, deadlines and million-dollar fab runs when designing CPUs creates a truly different environment. I can actually sit at the kitchen table and doodle around...]]> Tue, 23 Jul 2013 20:38:40 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/402/picoblaze-program-ram-access-for-an-interactive-monitor I have a confession to make: I love PicoBlaze!  There are many reasons to love it.  It is a tiny CPU (96 Spartan3 slices or 26 Spartan6 slices plus a BRAM).  It is simple.  It is bug-free.  It's pretty fast.  It can reduce the size and the complexity of your design - instead of debugging a big state machine, just throw one (or more) of these in.  Add a serial...]]> Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:15:48 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/405/strangecpu-4-microcode Sliding windows containing runs of microcode.

• Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises;  StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.

• Part 2: Sliding-Window Token Machines, an in-depth exploration of this curious technology; ARM notes.

• Mon, 13 May 2013 23:24:24 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/401/strangecpu-3-instruction-slides-the-strangest-cpu-yet Decoding instructions with a Sliding Window system.  0-Bit Sliding Register Windows.

  Table of Contents:
  • Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises;  StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.
  • Part 2: Sliding-Window Token Machines, an in-depth exploration of this curious technology; ARM notes.
  • Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:01:52 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/399/strangecpu-2-sliding-window-token-machines An in-depth exploration of Sliding Window Token Machines; ARM notes.
    Table of Contents:
    • Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the premises;  StrangeCPU concepts; x86 notes.
    • Part 2: Sliding-Window Token Machines, an in-depth exploration of this curious technology; ARM notes.
    • Tue, 05 Mar 2013 04:48:03 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/369/strangecpu-1-a-new-cpu Summary: In this multi-part series I will share with you a design, implementation notes and code for a slightly different kind of a CPU featuring a novel token machine that resolves an 8-bit token to pretty much any address in a 32-bit or even 64-bit address space, using not much more than an adder.
      Table of Contents:
      • Part 1: A new CPU - technology review, re-examination of the...]]> Mon, 25 Feb 2013 01:26:46 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/397/vga-output-in-7-slices-really Ridiculous? Read on - I will show you how to generate VGA timing in seven XilinxR Spartan3R slices.Some time ago I needed to output video to a VGA monitor for my Apple ][ FPGA clone.  Obviously (I thought), VGA's been done before and all I had to do was find some Verilog code and drop it into my design.  As is often the case (with me anyway), the task proved to be very different from...]]> Tue, 25 Sep 2012 20:19:07 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showarticle/382/fpga-assemblers-and-time-machines Flashback to 1986. A young man has a crazy idea - he wants to make a CPU all by himself. He is reading early Xilinx manuals cover to cover as if they were novels. Yes, you are quick - this is indeed a (mostly) true story about me and my dream, suddenly made possible by this new FPGA technology.

        Sadly more than 20 years went by before my first CPU ran in a Xilinx FPGA. Why did it take so long?...]]> Mon, 03 Sep 2012 02:08:36 +0000 Victor Yurkovsky