Re: gEDA-user: PC emulator and HDL

[Stephen Williams <steve@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ahmad Sayed wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I have an idea of a project, but actually i'm software developer rather than
> hardware designer, so i need you to help me to figure out the usability of
> it, my idea in short focus on the circuit designed to work wih computer e.g.
> computer prephierals.
> I need to provide a method to simulate these circuits by using PC emulator,
> to be more specific you got your circuit in HDL, and you have this circuit
> ready with e.g. parallel port interface, you virtually connect this circuit
> to PC emulator e.g.  bochs or qemu, and write a normal device driver in this
> guest Operating system.
> 
> The PC emulator will treat the HDL code as real hardware component.

I think this is an excellent idea, but a bigger one then you
might realize. In particular, it is usual these days that people
are writing their HDL to simulate PCI devices (for various versions
of PCI), USB devices, etc. I think the emulators such as qemu do
not emulate at that level.

For example, for a PCI device, the HDL writer will need the test
environment to create PCI cycles (including the clocks) at a *far*
lower level then qemu, for example, provides. Emulating at the BUS
cycle level would drastically slow down a PC emulator.

For USB devices or firewire devices, you might be able make up a
hookup point where you can tunnel from the emulator over to a
simulation process.

Note that for this to work, you are going to need to know a lot
about the particular interface you are simulating, because the
emulators themselves know nothing.

-- 
Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve at icarus.com           But I have promises to keep,
http://www.icarus.com         and lines to code before I sleep,
http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."


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