Simulating VHDL Of An AVR8 Soft Processor

Okay, now we’re beginning to feel a bit like [Alice]. This tutorial shows you how to simulate VHDL code. This code is intended to run on an FPGA and includes a software-only version of the AVR 8-bit microcontroller core. Essentially, you’ll simulate VHDL code that simulates AVR hardware. Wrap your mind around that!

The code is intended to run on a Papilio Field Programmable Gate Array development board. We saw an early version of this board running the AVR8 core about a year ago. However, you don’t need to have any hardware to follow along and recreate this simulation yourself. It might be a great way to get your feet wet with FPGA programming before making that first hardware buy. Five different screencasts take you through the process of getting the AVR8 code, using an altered Arduino IDE for it, setting up a free version of Xilinx ISE to run the simulation, then setting it free and interpreting the data that the simulator spits out the other end.

8 thoughts on “Simulating VHDL Of An AVR8 Soft Processor

  1. “Essentially, you’ll simulate VHDL code that simulates AVR hardware. Wrap your mind around that!”

    We have to go deeper! Run it in a virtual machine!

  2. It’s quite a useful tutorial example for those starting to work with FPGAs. Just FYI, if you install the Xilinx ISE software, you will find it requires 11 GB of disk space.

  3. This came along at just the right time for me. Thanks for posting! I’ve gotten to the point I’d consider myself “good” with AVR, and as JBeale said, it looks nice for just starting with FPGAs.

    The only ‘scary’ part is the size of that Xilinx tarball file: 3.88GB. :o Picked a helluva time to move to an SSD….

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