pic16f-antastic

A synthesizable picmicro-midrange clone for FPGAs

Keywords: PIC16F, PIC16F628A, Verilog, SystemVerilog, FPGA, Soft-core

Description

This is a cycle-accurate FPGA-ready clone of the picmicro-midrange core, i.e. it is a PIC on an FPGA! It is made entirely from the information in the Microchip datasheets. It's mostly written in Verilog, but some small parts (mainly the testbenches) are written in SystemVerilog. It doesn't yet have very many peripherals (perhaps you could expand the library?) but the core, basic GPIO, and asynchronous UART is ready to go. You can write programs in MPLAB X (target the 16f628a with MPASM for now) and convert the outputted Intel-format Hex file to a Verilog-ready Hex format using the included tool hex2v.

Getting started

The repository contains these directories:

/docs            - contains useful documentation about the PIC core.
/programs        - a library of programs (all one of them) for running on the core, as well as the hex2v converter tool.
/quartus-de2-115 - a quartus project for running the core+ports+uart on the DE2-115 (or just in the simulator)
/verilog         - the source code of the core and peripherals, as well as testbenches for automated testing

Running the core in Modelsim

You can import the Verilog and testbenches to ModelSim however you'd like, but my preferred method is to open it in Quartus and then use the Tools > Run Simulation Tool > RTL Simulation button in the menu bar. This launches ModelSim and compiles everything for you automagically, and then you can run one of the test scripts in the TCL Command Window. These scripts are supposed to be run in this order, as each test assumes the previous has already succeeded:

do test_core_basic.tcl - Runs and verifies basic commands such as AND, ADD, etc.
do test_core_control_flow.tcl - Runs and verifies the more tricky commands such as GOTO, CALL, RETURN, etc.
do test_core_tmr0.tcl - Runs and verifies the TMR0 peripheral (TMR0 is a core peripheral so it must be present)
do test_core_isr.tcl - Enables TMR0 interrupts and verifies that interrupts can occur
do test_peripheral_uart_spbrg.tcl - Tests that the UART peripheral baud rate generator works
do test_peripheral_uart.tcl - Tests basic TX and RX of the UART peripheral

Running the core on the DE2-115 board

You can actually run the core on any board, but you'll need to make your own project etc. My project works on the DE2-115, and adds some peripherals: SWITCHES/LEDG to PORTA, LCD/LEDR to PORTB, and the UART. The default program is "lcd.mem", which is included as the MPLAB project pic16fantastic_lcd.X. This program runs the LCD, the LEDS, the Switches, and the UART.

You can open this and compile and download it, without too much fuss:

Current 16f-antastic peripherals

To begin with, we're cloning the 16F628A (although not the ADCs or EEPROM of course - no support for those in the FPGA!). That said, we don't have any PIN count limitation so I expect I'll break all the peripherals out onto their own pins instead of MUXing them with PORTA/B.

Core

TMR0
Watchdog timer (partially implemented but needs finishing)
Power control

External (to core)

Contributing

Please, if you know Verilog and you like playing around with PICs, then fork and submit pull requests for more peripherals / features! I only ask that any changes can be tested automatically with testbenches, and that they don't cause any existing tests to start to fail.

Add new peripherals to /verilog/peripherals, and any new features can go in /verilog/core as appropriate.