This week, we worked on our project proposal presentation and began working on a design for the implementation of our project. We decided to use the DE10-Nano to implement our console for several reasons:
- It offers HDMI output, simplifying the implementation of sound generation and ensuring that video will be compatible with more devices.
- It uses a Cyclone V FPGA, which includes an ARM core, meaning we don’t need to dedicate as much time to the communication between modules.
- It has a large amount of ram and an SD card port, which the ARM core can boot from, meeting our storage requirements for ram and program storage.
- It has GPIO pins, which will allow us to communicate with older video game controllers easily.
Additionally, we performed individual research into the design and implementation of our project. Due to an error in our schedule and several facts coming to light during our research, we had to rearrange our schedule a little. Overall, the project is slightly behind schedule, but expected to be back on schedule by the end of next week. Andy was unable to finish a design for the audio interface, but expects to have it done soon. Joseph was unable to complete the design for the PPU interface, but also expects to finish it quickly.
Schedule Changes:
- Moved design presentations back a week. That was an error in our initial scheduling.
- Moved system call design back a week, to fix the same error.
- Joseph: Swapped the PPU interface design and HDMI tasks. Designing the PPU interface will be for next week (Mar. 1st).
- Andy: APU interface design moved back a week (he’s behind schedule).
- Andy: Input implementation moved back a week, as design time revealed that no more time would be needed and this allowed slack to be added to sprite engine implementation.
Our updated Gantt Chart schedule can be found below: