[Oberon] ProjectOberon on FPGA

[skulski at pas.rochester.edu]

> I work with FPGA since many years my business is change the hardware.

Mine is too. Our FPGA-based products are used on three continents,
including Switzerland. So my comments stem from a certain kind of
experience, though I am not pretending to be a top expert. But I sort of
know what is useful in the FPGA environment.

>>This may not be the best example.  I've built an IO-port-based circuit
>>to write the PicoBlaze BRAM specifically to be able to write a monitor
>>and use a software solution to load code via a serial port into a
>>PicoBlaze system (to avoid using JTAG and Xilinx tools).
>
> Every FPGA have a TAP controller, a generic USB=>JTAG adapter is cheap,
> write a JTAG loader application is not a big challenge.
> So, why not use a generic solution -available in every FPGA project- to
> load data into an FPGA?

This is an interesting comparison that shows that different projects need
different ways to achieve similar goals. Imagine an FPGA embedded deep in
a big system, perhaps even in the place that is hardly accessible. (In a
high radiation area, for example.) Uploading data over a serial link is a
method of choice in this case. Now imagine a board sitting next to you in
the lab. JTAG is more convenient in the latter case.

We use both solutions, JTAG for prototyping and remote uploading after
deployment. More info and typical use cases can be found in the following
book. I highly recommend this book to anyone who thinks that the FPGA is
just a convenient sandbox for running Oberon System and no more than that.

Applications of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays in Scientific Research
by Hartmut F.-W. Sadrozinski and Jinyuan Wu.
ISBN-13: 978-1439841334

Wojtek