Lab 1

Prerequisites

1. Git
2. Make

Installing these on windows is a bit more work than other OS. For Linux and Mac, you can just install them using the OS's package manager.

Many of the repos for the labs will use submodules so you will have to clone them with the --recursive option. If you get an error that the submodule failed to clone when doing so, you will probably need to add an ssh key to your github settings. To do so, do the following:

1. Create an ssh key by running the following command ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"
2. The previous command should make 2 files in your ~/.ssh/ directory(the private key and the public key). Go to your github settings and under "SSH and GPG keys" press the "New SSH key". Copy the contents of the public key(should be the one that ends with .pub) into the "key" section on github and then press "Add SSH key"
3. Add github.com to your known hosts list. You can just manually add it to the known_hosts file in your .ssh/ directory or you can just run ssh -T git@github.com and say yes when it asks you if you want to add it to the know hosts

Install Git on Windows

Go to the Git for Windows installatin page and download the installer. Run the installer and just use the default/recomended settings for everything.

Install Make on Windows

There are multiple ways to get make working on windows. Any of them are fine as long as you are able to use it with PowerShell or CMD. One common way is to use MSYS2.

1. Go to the MSYS2 page and download and run the correct installer for your system
2. Once MSYS2 is installed, open the MSYS2 terminal and install make using the pacman package manager
   • First you should run pacman -Syu. This updates the current packages ans synchronizes the package databases. You might need to restart the terminal after this step.
   • Then you can install make using pacman -S make
3. Once make works in the MSYS2 terminal, you will then need to add the MSYS bin directory to your PATH enviroment variable. If you installed MSYS2 using the default options, the path to the bin directory should be something like C:\msys64\usr\bin

Ex 1.1: Installing FPGA dev tools

Follow the installation instructions for OSS CAD-SUITE for your system.

Note for Windows users: To install the tool suite, you just need to run the executable that you downloaded when following the instrucitons from the OSS CAD-Suite repo. You should move this executable out of your Downlaods folder and into the folder you want the tools to be extracted to before running it. This executable does not exactly install the tools. It creates an enviroment that you can run the tools from. In order to start the enviroment, you can either execute environment.bat (if you are using CMD prompt) or environment.ps1 (if you are using PowerShell Prompt).

Ex 1.2: Simulate & Synthesize Blinky

Initialize the git submodule "blinky", and pull the latest changes.

Generate the waveform for the blinky example using the makefile: make top.sim. That should bring up a GUI. Select the following signals for viewing:

1. rst
2. clk
3. clk_2x_slow
4. clk_4x_slow
5. clk_8x_slow
6. clk_counter

Synthesize the blinky design using make top.bit. At the end, you should see a slack histogram and see a generated bitstream found under build/. You might need to create the build/ directory yourself before running make.

Ex 1.3: Change blink rate of LED blinky

Changing ONLY the line: assign led = ... change the rate of blinking to anything but 1Hz (the current default).

Resynthesize the design.

Ex 1.4: Test your Blink Design

Ask to use your TA's icesugar-pro to verify your edited blinky design has been properly synthesized and works with the FPGA.

Use icesprog <bitstream_name>.bit to flash the design.

You can also just drag the .bit file to the FPGA volume that opens up when you connect it instead of running the icesprog command.

Note: You must have your lab kit by next week. You will not be allowed to use the TA's dev board in future labs.