I am trying to build a generic baud rate generator process for a uart transmitter.
The transmitter works fine if I ignore the baud rate divider and pass in the clk signal in the sensitivity list. But I get errors (describe in code comments) if I try to implement the divider. I tried two different methods and both either gave an error, or did not have the expected output. Yes, the exact code posted will not work since I assign fbaud twice, I comment one out to test.
Perhaps I don't understand how the baud generator is supposed to work. From my understanding, the fpga clock runs at 50mHz which is to fast for the rs232 communication. So we need to wait a certain number of clock cycles before we can transmit our character.
In this case, we have a variable baud so we divide the stock clock by the baud generator to get the number of clock cycles we need to wait before sending our 'tick' signal to the transmit state machine.
The baud divider is set in the test bench to x"000008".
-- Universal Asynch Receiver Transmitter
---------------------
library ieee;
use ieee.std_logic_1164.all;
use ieee.numeric_std.all;
entity eds_uart is
generic (width : positive := 16);
port ( clk,reset: in std_logic ;
din_wen: in std_logic; -- state machine sets value thus buffer needed
brd : in std_logic_vector(23 downto 0); -- buad rate dividor
din : in std_logic_vector(7 downto 0); -- input value
txd: out std_logic; -- sent data bit
tx_busy : buffer std_logic -- sent data bit active
);
end entity eds_uart;
architecture behaviour of eds_uart is
type state_type is (idle_s, wait_s, transmit_s); -- three possible states of uat
signal current_s: state_type;
signal tick: std_logic := '0'; -- baud rate clock
signal count: integer := 0; -- count number of characters sent
signal shift: std_logic_vector(9 downto 0); -- intermediate vector to be shifted
signal fbaud: integer := 0;
signal fbaud_counter: integer := 0;
begin
--- process that is causing the issue.
process(clk, brd) begin
fbaud <= (50000000)/to_integer(signed(brd)); -- 50,000,000 is the default clock Hz
------ error message ------
--# ** Warning: NUMERIC_STD.TO_INTEGER: metavalue detected, returning 0
-- # Time: 0 ns Iteration: 0 Instance: /eds_uart_tb/inst_uart
-- # ** Fatal: (SIGFPE) Floating point exception.
--# Time: 0 ns Iteration: 0 Process: /eds_uart_tb/inst_uart/line__29 File:
fbaud <= 50000;
--- error ---
-- this command simply does not work, it compiles and runs though
-- I don't get any transitions in my output wave
-- I don't think it is entering the transmit stage based on a clock signal
if (rising_edge(clk)) then
if (fbaud_counter = fbaud) then -- tick when proper number of counts have appeared
tick <= '1';
elsif (fbaud_counter < fbaud) then
tick <= '0';
fbaud_counter <= fbaud_counter + 1;
end if;
end if;
end process;
process(tick, reset, din) begin
if (reset = '1') then
current_s <= idle_s; -- default state
count <= 0; -- reset character counter
txd <= '1';
tx_busy <= '0';
elsif (current_s = idle_s and din_wen = '1') then -- transition when write enable is high
current_s <= wait_s; -- transition
tx_busy <= '1';
shift <= '1' & din & '0'; -- init shift value
end if;
if(rising_edge(tick)) then
if (current_s = wait_s) then -- transition on clock signal
current_s <= transmit_s;
elsif (current_s = transmit_s) then -- transition on clock signal
if (count < 9) then
txd <= shift(0); -- output value
shift <= '0' & shift(9 downto 1); -- shift to next value
count <= count + 1; -- increment counter
current_s <= transmit_s; -- dont change state
elsif (count = 9) then
txd <= shift(0); -- send last element
count <= 0;
tx_busy <= '0'; -- reset busy signal
current_s <= idle_s; -- start process again
end if;
end if;
end if;
end process;
end architecture behaviour ;
