Categories
Status Updates

Week of 3/30 for Danny Mathieson

Quick Note: Hopefully this ends up in the right places…

Goals for the week:

  • Start working on creating a cellular automation creator with a  preset starting state.
  • Possibly begin BRAM integration

Progress:

  • I didn’t know how I was going to test it with a hardware implementation, so I implemented the automation in C
  • I didn’t get the results that I expected, but this is fine as the hardware version will be easier to implement due to the case sensitive nature of the the calculations
  • Hardware implementation has begun as well, but I am not very far into it.

Current Challenge:

  • I am not 100% sure still that the way that I am calculating the values for each cell is entirely correct.
    • This is because none of the research that I have done supports whether every cell is computed one after the other with a newly changed cell affecting the cell to its immediate right, or if all of the cells are to be computed in parallel (much like a hardware system would do anyway) using the states of the previous cell to its immediate left.
    • Border conditions are also troublesome to compute, but with the way that I am computing them (using only itself and its only neighboring cell) This computation is going quite smoothly
  • It will take further testing to confirm whehter my calculations are being done correctly, but these can be minor fixes during implementation in the coming weeks.

Plan for next week:

  • Finish hardware implementation of calculations and have it program the board without errors
  • If time allows, coordinate with Sarah and begin integration of the BRAM parts and the automation, hopefully resulting with a finished cellular automation through VGA displayed on a monitor