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Designing an FPGA Calculator from Scratch(baltazarstudios.com)
54 points by zdw a day ago | 5 comments
defrost 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Ten minutes in it looks like a great project walkthrough from design to physical device build.

Good start for anyone interested in the guts of going from logic gates to math() primitives ( add, mult, tan, sin, etc ).

Two snippets from the lede, one from a chapter heading:

  This is a scientific BCD calculator that uses binary-coded decimals, the same internal number format HP used in its scientific calculators going back to the 1970s. It represents every decimal digit as a 4-bit nibble, which means perfect decimal accuracy, no floating-point conversion errors, and an architecture that is genuinely shaped by the problem it solves. 

  Across ten chapters, you will follow full arc: the architectural decisions and tradeoffs, the numerical algorithms (addition, multiplication, CORDIC for trig, logarithms), the custom CPU design and its 12-bit instruction set, a hand-written two-pass assembler in Python, the microcode that runs on that CPU, a scripting layer for high-level key functions, and finally the physical board with its battery, display, and keyboard. 
Chapter 6 (of 10):

  No general-purpose CPU has nibble-addressable memory and addressing modes designed to walk a 16-digit BCD mantissa — so this post designs one.
I like it.
foota 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would love to have some real application that needs an FPGA :) Someday perhaps.

avmich 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You would perhaps need to change the viewpoint for that. Theoretically, there is nothing which can't be achieved - functionally - without FPGA. However, that doesn't mean some problems can' be solved more conveniently using FPGA, and the solutions turn out better in some regards.

atultw 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Could you share some of those applications which are better solved with an FPGA? As a student I have some ideas but am interested to hear more.

Imustaskforhelp 2 hours ago | parent [-]

OTOH, I recently learnt that Jane street deploys their own FPGA servers for high frequency trade.