- PicoBlaze
PicoBlaze is the designation of a series of three free soft processor cores from
Xilinx for use in theirFPGA andCPLD products. They are based on aRISC architecture of 8 bits and can reach speeds up to 100 MIPS on theVirtex 4 FPGA 's family. The processors have an 8-bit address and data port for access to a wide range of peripherals. The license of the cores allows their free use, albeit only on Xilinx devices, and they come with development tools. Third party tools are available from Mediatronix and others. AlsoPacoBlaze , a behavioral and device independent implementation of the cores exists and is released under theBSD License .The PicoBlaze design was originally named KCPSM which stands for "Constant(K) Coded Programmable State Machine" (formerly "Ken Chapman's PSM"). Ken Chapman was the Xilinx systems designer who devised and implemented the microcontrollercite web|url=http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/appnotes/xapp213.pdf|title=PicoBlaze 8-bit Microcontroller|publisher=Xilinx, Inc.|accessdate=2007-06-25] .
When instantiating a PicoBlaze microcontroller in
VHDL , the respective KCPSM component name must be usedcite web|url=http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/userguides/ug129.pdf|title=PicoBlaze 8-bit Embedded Microcontroller User Guide|publisher=Xilinx, Inc.|accessdate=2007-06-25] . For example, for a PicoBlaze3 processor:component kcpsm3 is port ( address : out std_logic_vector(9 downto 0); instruction : in std_logic_vector(17 downto 0); port_id : out std_logic_vector(7 downto 0); write_strobe : out std_logic; out_port : out std_logic_vector(7 downto 0); read_strobe : out std_logic; in_port : in std_logic_vector(7 downto 0); interrupt : in std_logic; interrupt_ack : out std_logic; reset : in std_logic; clk : in std_logic ); end component;
ee also
*
PacoBlaze
* LatticeMico8
*LatticeMico32
*MicroBlaze
* Nios
*Nios II
*OpenFire Soft Processor External links
* [http://www.xilinx.com/picoblaze PicoBlaze on the Xilinx website]
* [http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/ipcenter/data_sheet/picoblaze_productbrief.pdf PicoBlaze product brief]
* [http://www.xilinx.com/bvdocs/userguides/ug129.pdf PicoBlaze user manual]
* [http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xweb/xil_tx_display.jsp?sTechX_ID=kc_emb_micro TechXclusives: Creating Embedded Microcontrollers (Programmable State Machines)] [http://bleyer.org/pacoblaze/picoblaze.pdf PDF]
* [http://www.xilinx.com/ipcenter/processor_central/picoblaze/picoblaze_user_resources.htm PicoBlaze user resources]
* [http://www.mediatronix.com/tools/index.htm Mediatronix free FPGA tools]
* [http://www.xs4all.nl/~marksix Free Linux IDE]
* [http://bleyer.org/pacoblaze PacoBlaze: a synthesizable and behavioral Verilog clone of PicoBlaze]References
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