Category Archives: why another processor?

Why another Hardware Processor?

Hardware description languages are good for particular problems (e.g parallel memory calculation jobs). But it is tough to handle sequential execution problems with them. For such problems the sequential execution of a programm often fits well. A standard solution would be to use a Microcontroller Core (e.g. from Opencores written in VHDL). To programm this Microcontroller often the C programming language is used. The C code is converted to Assembler and the Assembler code is then loaded into the Microcontroller. To accomplish such a task you at least need a C programming environment and a VHDL programming enviroment and you need a chain between them create and load the Assembler. What if you could write your Microcontroller Code in the same environment where you describe your hardware. This is where the Python Hardware Processor together with Myhdl fits in. So the idea was to create a Python Hardware Processor that supports just enougth of the python language to handle sequential execution problems. Parallel array processing jobs and comparable, are then implemented in the hardware description language where they normaly nicely fit and perform well.


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