 |
 | |
| Hardware | |
|---|---|
| MCU | MSP430 (Texas Instruments) |
| FPGA | Spartan 3 XC3S50-4PQ208C |
| USB interface | FTDI FT2232C |
| I/O | |
| Audio interface | |
| PS2 connectors | |
| RS232 connector | |
| Keyboard | |
| Line LCD display | |
| Expansion connectors | |
| License | BSD licenses |
| Website | http://merlin.fit.vutbr.cz/FITkit |
FITkit is a hardware platform used for educational purposes at the Brno University of Technology in the Czech Republic.
The FITkit contains a low-power microcontroller, a field programmable gate array chip (FPGA) and a set of peripherals. Utilizing advanced reconfigurable hardware, the FITkit may be modified to suit various tasks.
Configuration of the FPGA chip can be specified using the VHDL hardware description language (i.e. VHSIC hardware description language).
Software for the Microcontroller is written in C and compiled using the GNU Compiler Collection. Configuration of the FPGA chip is synthesized from the source VHDL code using professional design tools, which are also available free of charge.
The FITkit serves as an educational tool in several courses throughout the bachelor's and master's degree programmes. Students are expected to create an FPGA interpreter design of a simple programming language (such as Brainfuck) as part of the Design of Computer Systems course. [1]
The project is developed as an open-source (software) and open-core (hardware), under the BSD license.
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence the term field-programmable. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). Circuit diagrams were previously used to specify the configuration, but this is increasingly rare due to the advent of electronic design automation tools.
The VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) is a hardware description language (HDL) that can model the behavior and structure of digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from the system level down to that of logic gates, for design entry, documentation, and verification purposes. Since 1987, VHDL has been standardized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as IEEE Std 1076; the latest version of which is IEEE Std 1076-2019. To model analog and mixed-signal systems, an IEEE-standardized HDL based on VHDL called VHDL-AMS has been developed.
An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including electrical or electronic hardware and mechanical parts. Because an embedded system typically controls physical operations of the machine that it is embedded within, it often has real-time computing constraints. Embedded systems control many devices in common use today. In 2009, it was estimated that ninety-eight percent of all microprocessors manufactured were used in embedded systems.
In computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits.
AVR is a family of microcontrollers developed since 1996 by Atmel, acquired by Microchip Technology in 2016. These are modified Harvard architecture 8-bit RISC single-chip microcontrollers. AVR was one of the first microcontroller families to use on-chip flash memory for program storage, as opposed to one-time programmable ROM, EPROM, or EEPROM used by other microcontrollers at the time.
A system on a chip, also written as system-on-a-chip and system-on-chip, is an integrated circuit that integrates all or most components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory interfaces, on-chip input/output devices, input/output interfaces, and secondary storage interfaces, often alongside other components such as radio modems and a graphics processing unit (GPU) – all on a single substrate or microchip. It may contain digital, analog, mixed-signal, and often radio frequency signal processing functions.
An application-specific integrated circuit is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. For example, a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-efficiency video codec is an ASIC. Application-specific standard product (ASSP) chips are intermediate between ASICs and industry standard integrated circuits like the 7400 series or the 4000 series. ASIC chips are typically fabricated using metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) technology, as MOS integrated circuit chips.
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In electronic design, a semiconductor intellectual property core, IP core, or IP block is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or integrated circuit layout design that is the intellectual property of one party. IP cores can be licensed to another party or owned and used by a single party. The term comes from the licensing of the patent or source code copyright that exists in the design. Designers of application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) and systems of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) logic can use IP cores as building blocks.
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C to HDL tools convert C language or C-like computer code into a hardware description language (HDL) such as VHDL or Verilog. The converted code can then be synthesized and translated into a hardware device such as a field-programmable gate array. Compared to software, equivalent designs in hardware consume less power and execute faster with lower latency, more parallelism and higher throughput. However, system design and functional verification in a hardware description language can be tedious and time-consuming, so systems engineers often write critical modules in HDL and other modules in a high-level language and synthesize these into HDL through C to HDL or high-level synthesis tools.
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Mitrionics was a Swedish company manufacturing softcore reconfigurable processors. It has been mentioned as one of EETimes "60 Emerging startups". The company was founded in 2001 by Stefan Möhl and Pontus Borg to commercialize a massively parallel reconfigurable processor implemented on FPGAs. It can be described as turning general purpose chips into massive parallel processors that can be used for high performance computing. Mitrionics massively parallel processor is available on Cray, Nallatech, and Silicon Graphics systems.
Aldec, Inc. is a privately owned electronic design automation company based in Henderson, Nevada that provides software and hardware used in creation and verification of digital designs targeting FPGA and ASIC technologies.
The Advanced Learning and Research Institute (ALaRI), a faculty of informatics, was established in 1999 at the University of Lugano with the mission of promoting research and education in embedded systems. The Faculty of Informatics within very few years has become one of the Switzerland major destinations for teaching and research, ranking third after the two Federal Institutes of Technology, Zurich and Lausanne.
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