RE: Port a VHDL design from AMD Zynq & Pynq to Spartan-7 & MicroBlaze - part 2: software

Jan Cumps — Sat, 13 May 2023 19:29:31 GMT

The Zynq and Spartan-7 are very different, and the price shows it. For the exercise here, they are both vastly over-specced. This design (without the controller or processor) can be built on the smallest of FPGAs.

What you can see is that the extra oomph on both FPGAs allow for easy learning, experimenting and prototyping. The Linux + PYNQ platform on the Zynq in particular allows easy testing of designs. It's so easy to exchange signals and values with VHDL blocks. Even if you are building a small FPGA design, having this platform at hand can speed up the validation of that small design. You can create test beds to automate the checks, and to take care that all boundary cases are covered. The fast feedback I get when testing something, without the need of setting up a bench or logic analyser, has helped me to understand what the effect of subtle changes in the VHDL do.

Simulation is important, but checking what the state is after a particular operation, is often easier if you can just poll the objects at runtime.