Course pages 2019–20
ECAD and Architecture Practical Classes
Exercise 1: Human Input in simulation
Scheduling
You should aim to complete this exercise during week 2.
Introduction
We have mated a DE1-SoC board from Terasic with our own input/output board mounted on the back. Output is in the form of an LCD and some tri-colour LEDs. For this exercise we will focus on the inputs: rotary dials and switches.
Rotary Dials
Rotary encoders are widely used for human input from old mechanical mice to the rotary knob you find on a Nest thermostat. There are also many industrial applications: see Wikipedia on rotary encoders for details.
The two rotary dials on the DE1-SoC I/O board are incremental rotary encoders which have mechanical contacts. There are two outputs which produce a Gray code sequence when they are turned. A full rotation is 24 discrete steps. For a clock-wise step, a clean signal will have a waveform as follows:
For a counter-clock-wise step, the waveform looks as follows:
The output signal is digital and asynchronous; the time between two edges on a waveform is only determined by the physical action of turning the knob. Physically this is implemented by moving a conductive part over a two-channel "code track" on a disc. Wiggle in the conductive part causes a bouncy output signal from the rotary encoder. In practice, this means that if you measure the signal produced by a clock-wise turn, the result will look more fuzzy. By using an oscilloscope, we measure the following: `
Although we can definitely recognise the square wave of a counter-clock-wise turn in this diagram, the noise we observe could make it difficult to make decisions in a digital system. In two places, a high signal drops to low for periods as much as 0.2ms. To turn this signal into a clean square wave that we can interpret in some control logic, we must first apply some filtering known as debouncing.
Synchronising external inputs
First, before we can pass signals into our logic, we need to synchronise them with our clock. If the input to a flip-flop changes during its setup and hold periods, there is a chance the flip-flop will go metastable - produce an output voltage that's somewhere between 0 or 1. If we provide this signal to another logic gate, that may also go metastable, and so on through the system, leaving the system in an indeterminate state.
The probability of metastability decays exponentially with time. Hence a common design pattern is the two-flop synchroniser:
By delaying the signal for a least a whole clock period, we give time for the metastability to decay to a stable value, substantially reducing the probability the output of the second flip-flop is metastable.
Such a synchroniser is also common for clock-crossing: when signals synchronous to one clock are converted to being synchronous to another.
Task 1 - Debouncer
Implement debouncing logic in SystemVerilog. It will take the following input signals:
- A clock signal
- A bouncy signal
The output of this component is a debounced (i.e. cleaned up) signal
Assume that this logic block receives an input clock of 50MHz. Your logic should sample the input line and change the value of its output line only if a signal has been in the same state for a certain amount of samples. Choose this time interval such that it is long enough to detect the spikes as seen in the measurement above, but short enough to still be able to determine which of the two lines was set to high first.
Ensure you synchronise each asynchronous input using a two-flop synchroniser as depicted above. You may find it useful to make a separate synchroniser module.
We encourage you to do test driven development using the simulation techniques you have already learnt. To help you get started, we've created a simple test bench tb_debounce.sv and a suitable "do" script tb_debounce.do.
Download rotary.zip. Create a directory exercise1 and unpack it inside.
When implementing this component in SystemVerilog, please store the file as "debounce.sv" and use the following template so that it matches up with the test bench.
module debounce
(
input wire clk, // 50MHz clock input
input wire rst, // reset input (positive)
input wire bouncy_in, // bouncy asynchronous input
output reg clean_out // clean debounced output
);
/* Add wire and register definitions */
/* Add synchronous debouncing logic */
endmodule
Tips:
- First, consider how to detect a change in the input line from one clock period to the next.
- Then use a counter to reflect that change on the output only after a sufficient number of clock cycles have elapsed.
- Until that period has elapsed, ignore all further changes on the input line.
Task 2 - Rotary Decoder
Create a new SystemVerilog module that implements control logic for interpreting the output of the rotary encoder. The input of your control logic will take three signals:
- A 50MHz clock signal.
- A reset signal (active-high, meaning that reset is asserted when its signal is 1).
- A two-bit rotation signal.
Its output will be:
- An rotary_pos 8-bits integer value representing the position of the knob relative to its begin position.
- A rot_cw signal asserted for one cycle when a clock-wise rotation is detected.
- A rot_ccw signal asserted for one cycle when a counter-clock-wise rotation is detected.
Your logic is expected to perform the following:
- Debounce the input signals.
- For every clock-wise detected step, increment the output value by one and assert the rot_cw signal for one cycle.
- For every counter-clock-wise detected step, decrement the output value by one and assert the rot_ccw signal for one cycle.
- When the reset signal is asserted, reset the counter to 0.
When implementing this component in SystemVerilog, please store the file as "rotary.sv" and use the following template.
module rotary
(
input wire clk,
input wire rst,
input wire [1:0] rotary_in,
output logic [7:0] rotary_pos,
output logic rot_cw,
output logic rot_ccw
);
/* Add wire and register definitions */
/* Instantiate debouncing components */
/* Synchronous output value manipulation logic */
endmodule
Test your module using tb_rotary.sv and tb_rotary.do supplied in the zipfile.