SEGGER Microcontroller’s Post

#PolarFire#Microchip#segger In this article, SEGGER's Technical Director Axel Wolf explains how to use J-Link debug probes and Embedded Studio IDE to: ➡️ Connect to all five cores on the PolarFire SoC Icicle Kit ➡️ Run example projects on both E51 and U54 cores ➡️ Verify and debug your target system quickly and reliably

"Most of our life problems come from miscommunication" We humans have languages, accents, and slang to bridge that gap. Machines face the same challenge. A CPU needs to talk to sensors, displays, and memory chips – but how do they “understand” each other? That’s where protocols come in. They define a common language so that when one device sends data, the other knows exactly how to receive and interpret it. Since these peripherals aren’t always directly wired into the CPU bus, we call them off-chip protocols – examples being UART, I²C, and SPI. Without these protocols, our devices would be like people using different languages with no common dictionary—messages are sent, but nothing is understood. #VLSI #Semiconductor #ASIC #EDA #ChipDesign #PhysicalDesign #Frontend #Documentation #Verilog #DigitalLogic #DigitalElectronics #LogicDesign #FPGA #Chipdesign #Interview #protocols #offchipProtocols #UART #SPI #I2C #CPU

Some of the Must-Master Embedded Topics for Semiconductor Giants If you aim for NVIDIA, Qualcomm, Intel Corporation ,Texas Instruments,AMD, these core + advanced topics will make you interview-ready: --- 🔹 Core Embedded Topics 1. Interrupt Handling & ISR – Nested interrupts, latency, real-time constraints. 2. Memory Management – Stack vs Heap, fragmentation, memory leaks. 3. RTOS Concepts – Task scheduling, priority inversion, mutex vs semaphore. 4. Embedded C – Pointers, volatile, memory alignment. 5. Microcontroller Architecture – ARM Cortex, RISC vs CISC, registers. 6. Peripheral Interfaces – UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, GPIO config. 7. Bootloader & Firmware Updates – Secure OTA, multi-stage boot. 8. DMA – High-speed data transfer without CPU load. 9. Power Management – DVFS, clock gating, low-power modes. 10. Debugging – JTAG, GDB, race condition fixes. --- 🔹 Advanced Topics 1. Cache & MMU – L1/L2 cache, TLB, address translation. 2. Multithreading & Sync – Mutex, semaphore, spinlocks. 3. Bare-Metal vs RTOS – When to use each. 4. Linux Device Drivers – Char vs block drivers, kernel modules. 5. Hardware-Software Co-Design – Firmware + silicon integration. 6. Embedded Security – Secure boot, encryption, firmware auth. #EmbeddedSystems #Semiconductors #Qualcomm #NVIDIA #Intel #TexasInstruments #AMD #Linux #RTOS #Firmware #EmbeddedC #engineering #embeddedsystems

Once upon a time, every chip vendor had their own compiler(s). I once worked for a company that had 4 different architectures and 4+1 different compilers! Now we have GCC and LLVM for CPUs. Personally, I am going to do everything I can to make sure we finally get a proper "GCC for FPGAs". Well....standard open source FPGA tooling just took a small but important step forward! Alexandre Singer has completed his awesome summer project ar Zero ASIC, enabling production-grade OpenSTA based static timing analysis on post routed netlists exported from VPR. Check out his blog post explaining how it was done and why this is a big deal. https://lnkd.in/eugBNStN

Clarity and compliance aren’t negotiable at sea. This AMD/Xilinx® Spartan-6® FPGA–based SDR packs an ultra-sensitive AIS receiver, crystal-clear transmit bursts, and a full AIS protocol stack running on an onboard ARM processor—supporting a wide range of I/O options. The result? A turnkey hardware, RF, FPGA, embedded software, and mechanical design that was independently tested by a third party and certified to meet international AIS protocol and RF performance standards. #fpga #fpgadesign #embeddedsystems

🧠 Part1 Demo: Triggering Pipeline Hazards in My Pipelined RISC-V CPU on FPGA To test and observe hazard detection in my pipelined RISC-V CPU on hardware, I originally tried to initialize my ROM using $urandom in Verilog — but soon realized that runtime randomization isn’t synthesizable. So I wrote a C program that generates randomized RISC-V instructions and writes them to a .txt file in RTL format. I then copied the hex output into my ROM, feeding the CPU with instructions that intentionally trigger data hazards, such as load-use dependencies and register read-after-write (RAW) conflicts, requiring EX/MEM or MEM/WB forwarding to resolve. Since the pipeline runs very fast on the FPGA, I added a slowClock signal to throttle LED updates, allowing me to visually observe the activity and hazard responses. 💡 LED Layout: ✅Right-most 6 LEDs → Instruction type (R-type, LW, I_imm, B_type, jal, and S_type.) ✅Next 5 LEDs → Control signals (e.g., RegWrite, MemRead, MemWrite, Branch, jump.) ✅Left-most 5 LEDs → Hazard indicators - stall - mem_wb rs2 - mem_wb rs1 - ex_mem rs2 - ex_mem rs1 🧪 Verification strategy: ✅Internal modules like the decoder, control unit, forwarding/hazard detection units, etc were tested with over 1 million randomized test cases, each with case summaries. ✅For modules that aren’t randomized-tested (like if_stage or rom), I at least confirmed behavior 1 by 1 in the waveform to ensure correctness. I also temporarily added an EX-to-WB register for this demo. 🔧 Next steps: Finish implementing the ID/EX register, EX stage, EX/MEM, and MEM/WB registers, then fully verify them before running again on the board. This demo marks real movement inside the pipeline — not just blinking lights, but instruction flow, data dependency, and control logic all coming together. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing it work after so much hard work. #FPGA #RISCVCpu #HDL #PipelineHazard #ComputerArchitecture #DigitalDesign #HardwareVerification #VHDL #Verilog #systemVerilog

Project Completed: SPI Slave with Single-Port RAM on FPGA   In digital systems, SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) is one of the most common protocols for communication between processors and peripherals. To explore this, we built a project where an SPI Slave communicates directly with a single-port synchronous RAM — allowing data to be written and read through SPI commands. We designed and implemented this system as a team effort with my colleague Naira Ahmed.   Verification and Deployment: - Simulation on QuestaSim - Linting with QuestaLint (no errors/warnings) - Synthesis & Implementation on Xilinx Vivado - FPGA Deployment with successful bitstream generation The FSM was tested with three different encoding styles (Gray, One-Hot, Sequential) — and we achieved the best timing results using Gray encoding.   Key Features: - FSM-based SPI Slave protocol - 256×8 single-port synchronous RAM - Wrapper module connecting SPI and RAM - Directed testbench validating write/read cycles Results: - Simulation: Verified correct write → read operations - Synthesis: Gray encoding outperformed other encodings - Implementation: Timing met, utilization within limits - FPGA: Fully functional prototype tested on hardware Special thanks to Kareem Waseem for technical guidance throughout the project. 📂 GitHub Repository: https://lnkd.in/dbMt5RVx   #FPGA #DigitalDesign #Verilog #Vivado  #QuestaSim #RTL #ElectronicsEngineering #DesignVerification

Where should it live? ASIC, FPGA, or software? These aren’t chip decisions, they’re system trade-offs. We make partitioning choices explicit so when the chip is committed, it’s the right chip. System-first makes silicon stronger. ❓ If you had to choose one word: flexibility, performance, or cost, which drives your partitioning most?

Here's a breakdown of my recent FPGA project! I've implemented a simple counter on an Artix-7 board. The core of the design uses a non-blocking assignment (<=) within an always @(posedge clk) block to increment the count register. To make the counting visible to the human eye, I implemented a clock divider that reduces the onboard 100MHz clock to a much slower frequency. It’s a great example of how simple Verilog code can translate into complex hardware behavior. #FPGA #Verilog #HardwareEngineering #DigitalLogic #Xilinx #Artix7 #Electronics

400G FPGA Acceleration — No FPGA Programming Needed! We’re excited to share that DYNANIC now fully supports the Terasic Mercury A2700, powered by Altera Agilex™ I-Series FPGA — bringing together Terasic’s advanced hardware and DYNANIC’s optimized software to deliver next-level 400G acceleration. ⚡ 400G line-rate packet processing ⚡ Stateful flow processing for networking & security ⚡ Standard DPDK interface — zero FPGA coding ⚡ Scales from edge to hyperscale data centers With Terasic hardware, Altera Agilex™ FPGA technology, and DYNANIC software, you can accelerate high-bandwidth, low-latency workloads faster than ever! 🔗 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gWCqhMxy 👉 Free trial of DYNANIC for Mercury A2700: https://lnkd.in/gNbnArQA #Altera #Agilex7 #FPGA #Networking #Security #DataCenters #SmartNIC