[Oberon] Development boards

[Chris Burrows]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Oberon [mailto:oberon-bounces at lists.inf.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of
> Skulski, Wojciech
> Sent: Saturday, 2 May 2020 12:24 PM
> To: ETH Oberon and related systems
> Subject: Re: [Oberon] Development boards
> 
> Peter asked:
> 
> > Is hardware really an issue?
> 
> Yes it is, especially when it is absent.
> 
> > Is FPGA essential?
> 
> It depends for what. In this group we are talking of a neat System-On-
> Chip composed of the most standard peripherals (SPI, PS/2 driver, SRAM,
> and video) driven with a neat and very simple 32 bit CPU capable of up to
> 75 MHz. It is a small system. Why not replace it with ... (type the name
> of your favorite) which is of course much better, cheaper, and more
> popular (continue the list).
> 
> However, the FPGAs can also be used differently. Our 32-channel digitizer
> which we are developing at SkuTek is processing 32 parallel streams of
> 14-bit samples collected at 100 MHz on each channel. The FPGA is
> continuously processing 32*14*100 = 44,800 Mbits/s = 5,600 megabytes per
> second. (Neglecting the subtle difference between MB and MiB.) There are
> several dozens fixed operations in each channel for triggering, baseline
> removal, feature detection, and waveform storage. All operations run in
> parallel. The performance of this FPGA is staggering. And to impress you
> even more, the FPGA costs about $2k per chip. Just the FPGA.
> 

I am impressed. 

Ever since I first got my hands on an FPGA with Project Oberon I have been
itching to spend more time to explore the full potential of these devices.
Although the Artix-7 devices used in the Arty boards is not as pricey as
yours (about $35 a chip) there is still a whole heap of unused functionality
after the RISC5 CPU and peripherals have been installed. So far (with much
appreciated help from Magnus and Paul) I have managed to add an I2C
controller, and the minor mod to the CPU instruction set to enable efficient
processing of CASE statements. 

Other simple experiments I am interested in doing include: 

* Modify the instruction set further to provide an autoincrement capability
to Load and Store (as mentioned here recently)
* Implement new instructions corresponding to ARM's REV, REV16, REVSH, and
RBIT instructions. They reverse bytes or bits within words or halfwords. My
understanding is that efficient versions of these are very useful in
algorithms used in Cryptography. 

Those are just a couple of examples. The possibilities that RISC5 and these
FPGAs give an embedded systems engineer are only limited by their
imagination! I can foresee a great demand for engineers with such skills in
the very near future - if not already,

Regards,
Chris Burrows
CFB Software
https://www.astrobe.com