Chilly week
This week some of that arctic cold which has been hammering Russia and east Europe reached us. Bonn's been a bit colder than normal, but still doable. East and Southern Germany has been suffering a bit more, though by no means as bad as it's been in Russia. The upside to the cold is that it's also been a bit sunnier, and the days are clearly getting longer.
Otherwise I had a good work week. After struggling for weeks with my VHDL program that would test the speed of this chip, I started over with an entirely new programming method. Within two days I had it working, and the good news is the chip is fast enough and will be integrated into the next FFT spectrometer board. It's nice to work on something that not only increases my understanding, but helps the lab as well.
Otherwise things have been rather uneventful. January in Germany isn't near as much fun as December. But next month is carneval, and that will be very exciting.
Otherwise I had a good work week. After struggling for weeks with my VHDL program that would test the speed of this chip, I started over with an entirely new programming method. Within two days I had it working, and the good news is the chip is fast enough and will be integrated into the next FFT spectrometer board. It's nice to work on something that not only increases my understanding, but helps the lab as well.
Otherwise things have been rather uneventful. January in Germany isn't near as much fun as December. But next month is carneval, and that will be very exciting.
posted by laura s at 9:57 AM
2 Comments:
Congrats on the chip! What's the new programming method?
Basically I stopped trying to program VHDL like C and started programming it like VHDL. It is after all a hardware description language. First first thing you're told when starting to program VHDL is that "everything runs in parallel". The sooner you appreciate this fact, the happier your life will be. But furthermore programming VHDL is like programming a bunch of individual electronic components. I can program a "flip flop" which is "connected" to a clock pulse and "multiplexer". As soon as output of the "flip flop" changes the "pin" which it's connected to on the "mulitplexer" changes immediately as well. Just like in Electronics. What makes my life difficult is that my TCP chip wants a series of commands. VHDL doesn't like to do anything in series. But I'm learning!
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