Lab 6- Introduction to Accumulators, Floorplanner and Spartan XL FPGAs

Objectives:

1. Understand basic principles concerning FPGAs and the difference between FPGA and CPLD devices.
2. Using the Digilent SpartanXL prototyping board, develop larger projects by introducing multiple file projects.
3. Introduction to accumulators
4. Introduction to Floor Planner
5. Introduction to Seven Segment Controller

Assignment:

1. Complete the tutorial for this lab. The tutorial has you develop a 4-bit input/8-bit output accumulator and transfer your output to the Digilent FPGA prototyping board. Your assignment will be to add an additional accumulator so that you will have two accumulators functioning in parallel. You will receive further instruction as you go though the tutorial. One of the greatest benefits to FPGAs is their ability to process large quantities of information in parallel. The tutorial will create an accumulator. It will use four switches and two seven-segment displays. That will leave you four switches and the other two seven-segment displays for your part. Both of the accumulators will be completely independent of each other. Think of it as two independent file cabinets within one chip. The only
   exception will be that they may both use the same two push buttons. BTN1 will be our reset or clear to empty the register and the display. BTN3 will be the add/accumulate button.
2. Use Floorplanner to demonstrate how ISE placed your accumulator on the FPGA.

Deriverables

1. Worksheet filled out and required .vhd files (see worksheet)