Simulating and downloading PIC circuits to Xilinx FPGA boards using TINA
In this video, first, we will demonstrate how to simulate and synthesize a circuit displaying prime numbers using a PIC MCU VHDL code.
In the end, we will download the circuit’s configuration file to the Digilent Basys 3 FPGA board.
In our circuit, PIC16F84_Prime_number_generator, the PIC MCU model is written in VHDL. The VHDL code is the functional model of a PIC16F84 8-bit microcontroller with initialized flash program memory.
First, we look at the VHDL code using TINA HDL Editor.
Next, we will check the program code written in C and converted to this VHDL code.
The project was created, and the program was developed with the free version of Microchip MPLAB IDE and their Microchip XC8 compiler.
After that, we return to TINA's Schematic Editor to test our circuit with digital circuit simulation.
Then, we'll open again the MPLAB editor to make the main difference in the C code for the synthesis, like the processor speed (100 MHz). This is the oscillator frequency of the BASYS 3 FPGA board. Next, we compile the project and convert the result – the executable binary – into VHDL.
The code is placed in the flash ROM component of our VHDL PIC model.
Finally, we will test our circuit, " PIC16F84_Prime_number_generator_BASYS3" in a real environment using the Digilent BASYS 3 FPGA board. We will use a free Xilinx tool, Vivado which is required for the FPGA in Digilent Basys 3. We will export the VHDL to the Xilinx Vivado software, compile it and load the resulting bitstream into the Basys 3 FPGA development board.
As soon as we finish programming the hardware and we turn the Basys3 board on, we can see the prime numbers written on the display as expected.