Study and Implementation of Picoblaze Microcontroller

With the increasing complexity of FPGA-based systems, some parts, such as I2C bus serial ports, network protocols such as TCP / IP, and use timers using software tools are easier to implement than hardware. Therefore, in these applications, it is necessary to use a processor alongside the FPGA architecture, so we can use the following two methods:

1- Using external processors: This method, in addition to increasing the cost of the system, will also result in the complexity of the architecture, since it is necessary to use the proper protocol for communication between the chip and the external processor.

2- Using a soft processor: In this way, the processor architecture is implemented using internal chip elements or as a stand-alone block, thus no extra cost is added to the design and the processor's communication with the internal parts of the chip can easily be done. The processor programming is also done by common languages such as assembly and C, and it can be compiled by software provided by the company.