[Oberon] Astrobe for FPGA RISC5 Oberon

[skulski at pas.rochester.edu]

Chris:

  this is great. I am convinced that Project Oberon makes a lot of sense
in the embedded space. Your effort is a big step in this direction.

FYI, we are using an embedded version of Project Oberon in the FPGA. Our
approach was kinda brute force, but it worked. We used only one MODULE*
(note the star!) and we put all the code right there. The MODULE* was
originally meant as a bootloader. However, there is really no reason why
the bootloader should stay a bootloader. So we made a utility module out
of it. It worked as expected. The drawback was that we lost the Oberon
safety net because the MODULE* is compiled like a SYSTEM. It was not a
showstopper in our case. Another drawback was loss of the modular
structure of the language because there can be only one MODULE* in the
system.

Your approach looks much better to me. I think that Astrobe can turn RISC5
into a super-Picoblaze. When finished it will certainly deserve an article
in the Xilinx online magazine. It will probably make it easier to port
Oberon System to Altera as well.

Regards,
Wojtek



> I am currently developing a version of the Astrobe IDE which hosts the
> Project Oberon FPGA RISC5 compiler on Windows.
>
> With the work done so far I can now develop RISC5 Oberon software on
> Windows
> using all the Astrobe IDE features. When the edit / compile cycle is
> complete the resulting code can be synchronised with the Project Oberon
> system running on FPGA hardware via the RS232 connection.
>
> A single Astrobe command (Build / Rebuild) can be used to automatically
> recompile ALL 23 core modules of the Project Oberon operating system -
> about
> 9000 lines in total. The whole process (including generating disassembly
> listings) takes 700 millseconds on my PC.
>
> The eventual aim is develop a minimal embedded version of the Project
> Oberon
> OS e.g. just the Kernel, loader, filesystem, SPI, RS232 and SD card
> support.
> As development is done on Windows the higher-level layers of the OS with
> the
> user-interaction features e.g. GUI, display, VGA, mouse, keyboard,
> compiler,
> editor etc will not be required. This should be easier to port to simpler
> FPGA development boards than those currently supported by the full Project
> Oberon OS.
>
> When it is publicly released later this year the software will be made
> available for no cost. Anyone who is interested can get the latest
> progress
> reports and release announcements by following the forum "Astrobe for FPGA
> RISC5" on the Astrobe discussion forum:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.astrobe.com_forum_&d=BQICAg&c=kbmfwr1Yojg42sGEpaQh5ofMHBeTl9EI2eaqQZhHbOU&r=uUiA_zLpwaGJIlq-_BM9w1wVOuyqPwHi3XzJRa-ybV0&m=UIfQlk_OIeeP32HGEwx3D-xXPH-DJDKlVNigTqKfptA&s=YCOVpehyKZqxlaqNXvYbVUJlo6kP28rsDzZx4-NRCq4&e=
>
> Regards,
>
> Chris Burrows
> CFB Software
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