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What is FPGC?

FPGC (FPGA Computer) is my big hobby project. It is a computer where almost every part of it is designed and implemented by me, from the 1's and 0's in the ISA to the Operating System, and from the PCB to the 3D printed enclosure.

TODO: add picture of FPGC running edit on edit.c

New in version 6

The largest change in the FPGC6 is the complete redesign of the CPU from the FPGC5 with more advanced techniques and performance in mind. The new CPU (built from scratch again) is now a pipelined CPU including hazard detection/forwarding with a better architecture for running C code including better signed integer support. It also allows for L1 cache (although currently not implemented). A lot of inspiration for the CPU is taken from MIPS, because many online resources on more advanced CPU techniques like pipelining and caching use MIPS as example. As for implementation specific inspiration, I looked a lot at mips-cpu by jmahler, since it is a good example of a simple pipelined CPU.

Version 6 of the FPGC now also contains a better SDRAM controller and cache, which greatly reduces the SDRAM bottleneck. Aside from this and the CPU, all other parts of the system are mostly identical to the FPGC5, and the CPU itself still has all old instructions implemented (although using different opcodes and argument placement) except for COPY. Therefore, after updating the Assembler, almost all code will still work meaning I do not have to rewrite most of my code base.

Current state

All existing FPGC5 code but the BCC Assembler works with the new CPU
FPGA module upgraded to Cyclone V (10x more block RAM!) with double the SDRAM bandwith and capacity
Added bitmap GPU layer that allows for accessing individual pixels
L2 cache working, no need for L1I cache with the current arbiter implementation
Ready to design and add L1D cache

Project Links

FPGC6:

FPGC5:

Next steps

Create 3D raycaster using new bitmap GPU layer
Update BCC assembler for new ISA
Add data memory cache (at 100MHz)
Implement true GPIO
Implement I2S Audio