HDL Core Lib » EtherBone Core

As shown at the WhiteRabbit Workshop, we now have running Hard- and Software
implementations. The EtherBone HDL core provides a slave module to go with
the WR PTP core, while the API is flexible in its role and platform independent.

Work in progress is systematic and randomized tests of both the API and the HDL core
and finalization of documentation and code cleanup.

Project status will change to Beta in the coming days.

I did a little dry run implementation sending back and forth messages
in inside one FPGA for the last WR Dev workshop, reading and writing
and reading data to and from a PWM controller hooked up to some LEDs.
Now the current task remains to update everything to EB spec v 0.2,
clean up, do monte carlo testing and adapt to the network interface
of WR core. Integration work from both sides has just begun, so stay tuned

I've written this a while ago to inspect the EB packets generated from my testbenches and test for
conformity. This is for the not yet exisiting version 0.2, so it will need some work from Wesley
on the software lib before you can really play. If requested, I will adapt the script fro V 0.1.

-Repo file clean up and renaming done
-Serialiser/Deserialiser to/from std_logic_vector implemented as top_level EB_CORE_std_lgc_vec.vhd

TODO:
- cleanup code according to style guide
- rename signals with new nomenclature
- minor performance improvements

- test with 32/16b wishbone adapter when available

FEC is a complete standalone encoder/decoder block
which can be bypassed

Etherbone core will only support Wishbone slaves, not masters.
Remote EB Mastre will be in software on intel based PC with a GUI
for controlling remote memory mapped EB/Wishbone devices.

Controllable devices will be LED, PWM signal generator and
fake (free running) system time with get/set

NIOS soft CPU will configure altera 10/100/1000 ethernet mac.
The mac will be directly connected to the buffer stage as a streaming
sink/source.

The Etherbone core functional specifications document is ready for comments.