IMPLEMENTATION OF 16 BIT RISC MiCROCONTROLLER ON FPGA

Abstract

The work presented in this dissertation report describes the implementation of 16-bit RISC Microcontroller in FPGA chip, using VHDL programming at Xilinx ISE 7.1 i platform supported by Xilinx .ISE and Aldec Active HDL simulation environment. This work explores an application area of FPGA to develop application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) as an independent System on Programmable Chip (SOPC) design. The design is targeted to make a feel of a 16-bit Microcontroller available in FPGA. Microcontroller is organized with 4 stage pipelined RISC architecture and supports a total of 81 instructions. Successful synthesis is done and design is downloaded in Xilinx Spartan II FPGA. Output along with internal states of the embedded processor can be seen on seven segment display of Xilinx Spartan II FPGA kit, available with us in microprocessor and computer lab. Synthesis reports and Place & route reports are also provided to verify the design implementation. This work focuses on the design methodology based on tools and techniques to capture the design and develop a Hardware Prototype of it. Like any other engineering design, Microcontroller designed is tested consistently and made modifications throughout whenever any problem arose. Pipeline has been modified and remapped for the better performance. Simulation is done using Xilinx ISE and Aldec Active HDL simulation environment to perform functionality test of this code. Synthesis optimization tools were used to convert the chip design in to smaller and faster design. Lastly the synthesized design is verified and various synthesis reports are analyzed to evaluate and. verify the performance of the designed chip. Atmel AVR RISC microcontroller (AT90S1200) is chosen as prototype, model for design and all the necessary features of AT90S200 is implemented successfully in Xilinx Spartan 2 FPGA. Microcontroller designed in this dissertation can process 74-86 instructions simulation result of all the instructions are been tested and validated successfully by means of hand calculations. All the important features of a microcontroller are implemented in FPGA, which now behaves as is a microcontroller core.