The virtual lab provides a remote
FPGA service, allowing
distant FPGA hardware to be programmed and controlled via any computer
network including the Internet. A previous incarnation of the virtual lab
has been used for research; the new version will be used for both teaching
and research into computer architectures and non-standard computation.
Replacement of the previous incarnation is necessary in order to
achieve greater
flexibility and scalability: I have been able to use the previous system
to inform the design decisions for the new system.
The manual for the virtual lab is now online.
Some of the software, such as client libraries, can be
downloaded.
The virtual lab uses the following software:
- An embedded system based on Linux
software and
FX12 FPGA hardware. This
acts as an interface between a TCP/IP network and
an FPGA board, allowing the board to be programmed
and controlled using a serial protocol. I modified
the Linux kernel for this device and wrote
the embedded application in C.
- An FPGA board, such as the
Spartan 3E Starter Kit,
but (more generally) any Xilinx FPGA board with JTAG support.
- A client library
to allow programs to access FPGA functions.
I wrote this library using Twisted Python.
- A client GUI, written using wxwidgets.
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Copyright (C) Jack Whitham 1997-2008
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