Computer Laboratory

Course pages 2015–16

ECAD and Architecture Practical Classes

Tick 2

To achieve Tick 2 you need to:

  • Answer the following questions on screen or on paper, and show them to a demonstrator
  • Show the demonstrator your working Etch-A-Sketch (or Pong) on FPGA

Questions

  1. What is the purpose of pin assignments, and why are they necessary?

  2. The clock crystal on the DE1-SoC is 50MHz. Consider if this was replaced with a 500MHz crystal. Would your design still work? Making reference to the output of your Quartus compilation, explain why this would be the case.

  3. Consider if we added a hundred Yarvi cores to our Qsys project. What challenges would we face? How would this differ from the x86 multicore CPU you might find in your laptop? (beyond simply the number of cores). Hint: think about how the memory hierarchies differ.

    4. Procedure

    You will need to hand in your results as part of your Portfolio of Assessed Laboratory work in Easter term, so keep them safe. In the portfolio you should include:

    • Your answers to the questions
    • A printout of the top level Verilog of your FPGA system

    On each document you should add a header:

    Name of practical class and tick: ECAD+Arch tick 2
Full name:
CRSID:
College: