Why Engineering ?

If you ask me why I decided to do engineering, I would keep myself silence for a moment. That is not because I don’t have an answer, but I have more than one answer. The main reason influenced me to do engineering was my strong interest since I was a toddler. Even when I was kid, I was so much fascinated by electronic and technological items. I never stopped playing with remote control cars; I repaired glitches which often get; thought in different perspectives to how they are made and even tried making simpler versions of those. Eventually, when I was in year 6, my dad bought a computer. This then became my new gadget to kill time. Soon after, having the taste of computer programming, I started to learn Visual Basic 6 as my first programming language with one my mates in the school. We used books and online materials as the helpful resources. With moving on to the high school, I allocated more time to my studies as my whole life is going to depend on the high school results. During my high school, I was showing good colours on mathematics which is an essential skill to be an engineer. Apart from those, my dad is an electrical engineer. Some people say I have inherited the abilities from my dad. All those indications motivated and interested me in doing an engineering degree in electronics.

MIPS single clock cycle processor in VHDL

This project was basically to implement a MIPS single clock cycle processor. It is slightly different from standard MIPS processor. The processor in this project consists of 8-bit registers and therefore it’s an 8-bit processor while the standard MIPS processor is a 32-bit processor. In this processor only 8 registers are implemented but in standard MIPS processor there are 32 registers. But the common feature between these two processors is both process 32-bit instructions.



When implementing, we were given main components of the processor. To make it simple what I did was, I printed the RTL Schematic diagram of all the components separately and pasted them in a large A3 paper. Then I connected pins one by one in the diagram using a pencil in A3 paper according to figure in the project handout. At the same time I did the port mapping in the Xilinx project to avoid any careless mistakes that we do as humans.

After completing the port mapping, syntaxes were checked by the ‘Check Syntax’ function in Xilinx. Then again the RTL Schematic diagram was generated to double check the answers. It was similar to the diagram that I had in the A3 paper and no errors found in that. Another key thing that I learned from this project is to assign FPGA board pins to the project input and outputs. It is done creating a User Constraint File (UCF).

After downloading the program into the board, some times we noticed the program doesn’t work correctly due to a loose connection of the cable. To overcome this problem one of the completed project was downloaded and verified if the cable works properly.

Another important point that I learned is how to generate memories by Xilinx Core. The difference between the generated memory and the VHDL based memory is another important factor that we understood. We also learned how to slow down the clock speed of the oscillator using a component in VHDL.

After finishing the part A when we tried to do part B we got an unresolvable error while trying to implement it. That’s due to a file confliction with the generated memory files in part A of the project. We overcame with that problem by cleaning the project files.

The overall project was successful. It is because we started it with a good preparation and the printed schematic diagram of components and connecting them by hand made the project a lot easy visualize and code. When doing complex projects like this, it is always better to have a hard copy of diagrams so that it is easy to visualize and will help a lot to make the coding easy. Not only that, it will save heaps of our precious time.

Enjoying my Free Time...

Got my results little long ago. It's 1A and 2Bs. A for Physics. I was really disappointed because of B for Maths. It was the Pure Maths paper that distroyed the Maths A. Any way my z-score is in a good level and applied for universities. Selection is up to God now.

I'm currently doing a PHP course only on saturdays. Sometimes on other days I use to play cricket, monopoly, network games with the school friends.

Glad to see that satelite tv provider in Sri lanka CBNsat has now started their test transmissions after the victory of supreme court. It was halted six months due to lots of false allegation by CID. They will start transmissons very soon.

Stepping to Linux...

First I used Linux when I was in grade 9. I installed Red Hat 9 in to my desktop. But after sometime I gave it up because I couldn't communicate Linux with Windows and it's not that easy to learn Linux like Windows. And later on I tried to install Debian to the desktop and failed. Thathi download them for me from his office. So I take this opportunity to thank him also.

After finishing my A/L exam, I found a linux course at Colombo University and started it last month. Amazingly we got a brand new computer lab to use there. Still I have finished only three weeks. And now I am understanding the power of Linux. Now I have installed Debian on my desktop and Fedora on my laptop, dual boot with windows. And most of the time switching to Linux now..

Trip...

First day Saturday, we went strait to Shanthi Uyana at Hunnasgiriya. It was a beautiful place surrounded with mountains. Sometimes the wind there is enough to take a human being. We took our lunch late, at about 4:00 pm. And then we had some religious events in the chapel there. We didn't fall asleep until 1:00 am because the wind sound is like a storm. We were scared that the roof would fly away..

We got up early in the morning next day to watch the colorful sight of sunrise behind the mountains. It was awesome. We left there after having our breakfast and came to Bandarawela Circuit Bangalore. That is also a nice and clean place compared to the other Circuit Bangalores I have gone. We had noodles as dinner and went to bed.

Early in Monday, we headed to Nuwara Eliya. It was rainy and gloomy when we entered the Nuwara Eliya Park. We took photograph's there and drove home.

The Start..

Hey this is the beginning of my blog...

Fortunately we are on a trip tomorrow.. can update some interesting stuff to my blog in next two or three days...