Month: November 2010

ARM Cortex-m3 – Remote debugging using GDB (1)

One of the things I’ve found more interesting and useful in Robotics is debugging.

Most of the time we use to print out traces through a serial port and, the luckiest ones, who own a JTAG emulator, can dig deeper into their bugs but always with a cable plugged.

So, now thanks to the excellent Espardino project and the help of its author, Ajo, who is a very good friend of mine, I decided to write my own stub for the ARM cortex-m3 architecture. You can check out more information about Espardino’s remote monitor here.

Also, the following are a nice source of information I used to write this stub:

The video below shows a debugging session of the stub running inside the LPC1343 ARM Cortex-M3 of the uXbot robot. The GDB is connected to a tiny application which acts as a bridge between the TCP connection and the bluetooth link to the robot. Given that this application is listening on a TCP port, the GDB debugger can be running somewhere else (on my iPhone? ;)) and it would still work.

In my next article I will get more into detail about the stub itself and the exception handling.

Daniel

SPI Communications – Slave Core VHDL

SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) protocol is a synchronous serial data link which operates in full duplex mode. It’s got a higher throughput compared to I2C or SMBus  and it’s very useful for high speed short-range communications.

The SPI protocol specifies the following signals:

  • SCLK — Serial Clock (output from master)
  • MOSI/SIMO — Master Output, Slave Input (output from master)
  • MISO/SOMI — Master Input, Slave Output (output from slave)
  • SS — Slave Select (active low, output from master)

All lines can be shared for every slave device in the bus except the Slave Select signal which has to be different (out of band selection) for each slave.

This is the basic operation depending on the CPOL and CPHA values:

spi-timing

The SPI core I’ve implemented is fixed for Slave and CPOL=0/CPHA=0 modes. This means that the MOSI line will be sampled at every rising edge of the SPI Clock whilst the MISO signal will be set right before this rising edge (actually, on the falling edge) so that it can be properly sampled by the Master.

SPI Module

As the FPGA will have its own clock, we’ll be having two different clock domains since the SPI master signals will be generated externally and they won’t be necessarily synchronized to the FPGA internal clock. Thus, the approach will be sampling all the external signals to get them synchronized and using two shift registers for input and output data.

 Source code:

entity spi_slave is
  port (
    RESET_in    : in  std_logic;
    CLK_in      : in  std_logic;
    SPI_CLK     : in std_logic;
    SPI_SS      : in std_logic;
    SPI_MOSI    : in  std_logic;
    SPI_MISO    : out std_logic;
    SPI_DONE    : out std_logic;
    DataToTx    : in std_logic_vector(7 downto 0);
    DataToTxLoad: in std_logic;
    DataRxd     : out std_logic_vector(7 downto 0)
    );
end spi_slave;

architecture Behavioral of spi_slave is

    signal SCLK_latched, SCLK_old : std_logic;
    signal SS_latched, SS_old : std_logic;
    signal MOSI_latched: std_logic;
    signal TxData : std_logic_vector(7 downto 0);
    signal index: natural range 0 to 7;
    signal RxdData : std_logic_vector(7 downto 0);

begin

 --
 -- Sync process
 --

  process(CLK_in, RESET_in)

 begin
    if (RESET_in = '1') then
      RxdData  '0');
      index <= 7;
      TxData  '0');
      SCLK_old <= '0';
      SCLK_latched <= '0';
      SS_old <= '0';
      SS_latched <= '0';
      SPI_DONE <= '0';
      MOSI_latched <= '0';

    elsif( rising_edge(CLK_in) ) then

      SCLK_latched <= SPI_CLK;
      SCLK_old <= SCLK_latched;
      SS_latched <= SPI_SS;
      SS_old <= SS_latched;
      SPI_done <= '0';
      MOSI_latched <= SPI_MOSI;

      if(DataToTxLoad = '1') then
          TxData <= DataToTx;
      end if;

      if (SS_old = '1' and SS_latched = '0') then
          index <= 7;
      end if;

      if( SS_latched = '0' ) then
         if(SCLK_old = '0' and SCLK_latched = '1') then
            RxdData <= RxdData(6 downto 0) & MOSI_latched;
            if(index = 0) then -- cycle ended
               index <= 7;
            else
               index <= index-1;
            end if;
         elsif(SCLK_old = '1' and SCLK_latched = '0') then
            if( index = 7 ) then
               SPI_DONE <= '1';
            end if;
            TxData <= TxData(6 downto 0) & '1';
         end if;
      end if;
     end if;
   end if;
   end process;

   --
   -- Combinational assignments
   --

   SPI_MISO <= TxData(7);
   DataRxd <= RxdData;

end Behavioral;

In order to test this core I wrote a simple testbench wich basically waits for a command from the master and answers it. This will serve as a base for the microcontroller code which will send this same command (0xA0) and wait for the answer (0xA4). This is the simulation view:

spi_simulation

As you can see, when the spi_done signal goes high, the datarxd register is loaded with the value 0xA0. Afterwards, the answer to this command (0xA4) is loaded into the datatoxload register and the MISO line is set to the right bit at every falling edge of the SPI clock signal.

As the simulation looks good, I decided to wire up the FPGA to an LPC2148 microcontroller and test the SPI core for real. The following code will run in the LPC:

 

void send_fpga_cmd(unsigned char cmd)
{
    unsigned char dummy;
    IO0PIN &= ~(1<<11);    // Select FPGA
    while ( !(SSPSR & 0x02) );
    SSPDR=(unsigned int) cmd;
    while((SSPSR & (1<<4)));
    IO0PIN |= (1<<11);    // deselect FPGA
    dummy = SSPDR;         //flush the RxFIFO

}

unsigned char read_fpga_byte()
{
    unsigned char data;
    SSPDR= 0xFF;         // write dummy data out to gen clock
    while((SSPSR & (1<<4)));
    data = SSPDR;
    return data;
}

while(1)
{
    send_fpga_cmd(0xA0);
    data = read_fpga_byte();
}

I configured the SPI bus to run at 2MHz on the microcontroller. Here you can see the logic analyzer output which shows that the SPI core works as expected.

spi_ping_la

As you can see, the microcontroller sends a ping (0xA0 byte) and the FPGA answers with a response command (0xA4 byte). The SPI clock frequency is exactly 2.000MHz and the behavior is the expected one.

Silvestre FPGA - SPI Test
Silvestre FPGA – SPI Test

Daniel