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how is that true? which component in a modern processor is akin to an fpga or any ip deployed to an fpga?
by mlevental 7y ago
how is that true? which component in a modern processor is akin to an fpga or any ip deployed to an fpga?
- anyfoo 7y agoThe CPU itself? For example, implementing a toy CPU is much much closer to how an actual, non-FPGA CPU works than, say, an emulator. But really anything done on an FPGA should teach you some portion of gate-level logic (yeah yeah, there's LUTs and other specialized cells instead of gates, close enough). And staying above physics, that's how computers work.
- satori99 7y agoI think OP is looking at this the other way around -- meaning that it is perfectly possible to create a soft-core CPU on an FPGA, which is a great way to understand what any processor actually does. I know this, because I started learning and tinkering with this sort of thing a year or so ago, with no prior experience with electronics or hardware design, or a formal comp-sci education. I had decades of programming experience already, but I think I have learned more about the fundamentals of computer science while playing with cheap FPGAs, than I have by just writing code.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoAll the digital logic building blocks of a processor, from comparators to ALUs up to branch predictors and pipelines, can be defined and wired together in an HDL. If you have a sufficiently large FPGA, then you can "run" that HDL specification on the FPGA to get a working processor. It's pretty common for computer engineering students to implement a simple RISC processor (often a simplified MIPS) on an FPGA as a class project. In my experience it was a fantastic way to learn the basics of computer architecture.