34 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
34 lines
1.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Computer From Scratch
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author: Collin J. Doering
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date: Jun 19, 2015
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description: Building a computer from scratch using VHDL
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tags: general, programming, hardware, nand-to-tetris
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---
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Recently I have had the pleasure of completing the course *Nand to Tetris* on
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[Coursea](http://coursera.org). Firstly, I'd like to highly recommend it to anyone! I never
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thought it would be possible for me to understand computers all the way down to the hardware
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level (past assembly that is); *Nand to Tetris* has shown me otherwise! It has also inspired me
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to pursue learning a real world hardware description language and attempt to implement the
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*Hack* system on an FPGA. In this article I will describe how the process is coming and the
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what remains to be completed.
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After implementing the *Hack Computer System* in the hardware description language described by
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the course, I went on to implement everything in [VHDL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHDL),
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with the end goal of being able to realize the design on a
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[FPGA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array) (Field Programmable Gate
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Array). I also needed a set of test benches to verify correctness of the design through
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simulation. Initially I set out to find a completely open source solution. To my dismay, I
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found that FPGA's are incredibly proprietary. Namely, the process of *synthesis* cannot be done
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using open source tools, though there exists a few projects which are reverse engineering the
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bit file format of various FPGA's in order to develop a open solution to synthesis, they are
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not yet ready for use. So, synthesis needs to be done with proprietary tools.
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which is
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taking the hardware description (either VHDL or Verilog) and convert it to a bit file (a format
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the FPGA can use).
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