On 17 Jun 99, at 19:48, David L. Nicol wrote:
> How difficult is it to write for an FPGA array? Do tools exist to
> compile a C program into an FPGA configuration? Has BEos been ported
> to it?
Basically what you have to do is to feed instructions which the FPGA
can execute from firmware (EPROM, or static RAM). But you write your
own instructions, so you can have the FPGA execute any instruction
set you want.
You define the CPU architecture you want by putting voltages onto the
FPGA pins.
Having done that, use a "standard" compiler with the opcode generator
replaced by one that corresponds to your target architecture.
People who try these stunts are sometimes successful, but one notices
that they tend to have splinters in their fingers from scratching
their heads trying to figure out what went wrong, and that bad
language frequently is to be heard from the labs in which they're
working. Getting the hardware to execute one instruction correctly is
a major milestone, usually the project is pretty well cracked by
then.
The labs where these toys are played with probably haven't heard of
any OS except unix. Unless the supervisor vaguely remembers AppleDOS
or CP/M.
Regards
Brian Beesley
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