This week I spent most of my time trying to research new ideas for our project. I spent a lot of time trying to find new papers discussing the benefits of FPGAs while also looking through the papers Xiran and Grace sent, and trying to evaluate the feasibility of the ideas. On Wednesday we finally settled on an idea, and we realized that we have only used FPGAs where we were providing inputs in the design via the switches and buttons on the board. But, we wanted to be able to send data to the FPGA from the computer while still using an Altera FPGA. I found a paper which discussed the feasibility of using ethernet to send data from the computer (Data Transfer System for Host Computer and FPGA Communication) which assured us that our idea could be possible.
On Friday, the three of us met with Prof. Nace to discuss the feasibility of our idea a little more. He confirmed that we should be able to use the Altera FPGAs and that he thought our idea had some interesting applications.
Next week, I want to continue to investigate how to send data from the computer to the FPGA, and visa versa because this is our biggest bottleneck right now. Next week, we are hoping to decide on the best method to send/receive data, and also potentially speak with Prof. Hoe because his research area is related to our project.