Logic Analyzer Core

Overview

The Logic Analyzer core allows for debugging logic by capturing a set of digital signals to memory. This is done in response to a trigger condition, which starts the capture, which continues until the onboard memory is full, and the resulting capture is then read out to the user.

While this is pretty much identical to the behavior of a benchtop logic analyzer, Manta has a few tricks up its sleeve that you may find useful! These are described below:

Configuration

Just like the rest of the cores, the Logic Analyzer core is configured via an entry in a project's configuration file. This is easiest to show by example:

---
cores:
  my_logic_analyzer:
    type: logic_analyzer
    sample_depth: 4096
    trigger_location: 1000

    probes:
      larry: 1
      curly: 3
      moe: 9

    triggers:
      - moe RISING
      - curly FALLING

There's a few parameters that get configured here, including:

name: The name of the Logic Analyzer core. This name is used to reference the core when working with the API, and can be whatever you'd like.
type: This denotes that this is a Logic Analyzer core. All cores contain a type field, which must be set to logic_analyzer to be recognized as an Logic Analyzer core.

Sample Depth

This refers to the number of samples saved in the capture, and is set with the sample_depth entry in the config file. A larger sample depth will use more resources, but show what your probes are doing over a longer time.

Probes

Probes are the signals in your logic that the Logic Analyzer connects to, and are specified in the probes entry of the config file. Each probe requires both a name and a width to be specified. These names can be whatever you'd like, however they are referenced in the autogenerated Verilog - so don't use something your synthesis engine won't appreciate.

Triggers

Triggers are the conditions that your logic must meet in order to start a capture, and they're specified under the triggers entry in the config file. Manta's triggers are reprogrammable, meaning you don't need to rebuild your source code to change the trigger condition - just updating the configuration file is enough. If multiple triggers are provided, any one trigger being met will trigger the entire core.

Each individual trigger is specified with the following structure:

[probe] [operation] [argument]

probe: The probe that the trigger applies to. Each probe only supports one trigger on it. For instance, in the example above we couldn't add a trigger for curly LEQ 4, since we've already assigned a trigger to curly.
operation: The logical operation to perform. Manta supports the following operations:
- RISING, which checks if the probe has increased in value since the last clock cycle.
- FALLING, which checks if the probe has decreased in value since the last clock cycle.
- CHANGING, which checks if the probe is changed in value since the last clock cycle.
These operations only compare a probe's value with itself, but sometimes it is useful to compare a probe's value to a constant. Manta provides a operations for doing such, including:
- GT, for greater than.
- LT, for less than.
- GEQ, for greater than or equal to.
- LEQ, for less than or equal to.
- EQ, for equal to.
- NEQ, for not equal to.
These operations require a constant to compare against, referred to as an argument, which is described below:
argument: A constant to compare against, if the operation specified requires one. On the FPGA, the argument will have just as many bits as the probe width.

Lastly, if you're not able to express your desired trigger condition in terms of the operators above, fear not! You can also specify an external_trigger: true entry in the config file, which exposes an input on Manta's top level for your own trigger.

Trigger Position (optional)

Sometimes, you care more about what happens before a trigger is met than afterwards, or vice versa. To accommodate this, the logic analyzer has an optional Trigger Position parameter, which sets when probe data is captured relative to the trigger condition being met. This is specified with the trigger_position entry in the configuration file, which sets how many samples to save prior to the trigger condition occurring. This is similar to a "holdoff" option on a traditional oscilloscope or logic analyzer.

If trigger_position is not specified, Manta will default to centering the capture window around the trigger condition. This results in just as many samples before the trigger as after.

Capture Modes (optional)

The logic analyzer has a few different ways of capturing data, which are represented by the capture modes below:

Single-Shot: Once the trigger condition is met, record the value of the probes on every clock cycle in a continuous single shot.
Incremental: Record samples when the trigger condition is met, but don't record the samples when the trigger condition is not met. This is super useful for applications like audio processing or memory controllers, where there are many system clock cycles between signals of interest.
Immediate: Record the value of the probes on every clock cycle, beginning immediately, and regardless of if the trigger condition is met. This is useful for investigating cases where a trigger condition is never being met (such as latchup or deadlock conditions) or obtaining a random snapshot of the FPGA's state.

Most logic analyzers use a single-shot capture by default, so Manta will do the same if no capture_mode entry is provided in the project's configuration file.

Usage

Capturing Data

Once you have your Logic Analyzer core on the FPGA, you can capture data with:

manta capture [config file] [LA core] [output filename] [[additional output filenames]...]

The capture may be exported as either a VCD or CSV file. If manta.yaml contained the configuration at the top of this page, then the following would export a .vcd file containing the captured waveform:

manta capture manta.yaml my_logic_analyzer capture.vcd

This will reset your logic analyzer, configure it with the triggers specified in manta.yaml, perform a capture, and create the file. Additional output files may be passed as well - Manta will detect the file format based on the extension (.vcd, .csv). Verilog (.v) files are also supported, and will follow the playback mechanism described below.

Playback

Manta has the ability to generate a module that plays back a set of data captured from a Logic Analyzer core. This module has a set of outputs matching the inputs of the Logic Analyzer, which when enabled, will take the exact values captured by the logic analyzer. This module is synthesizable, and can either be used in simulation or included in the FPGA design.

If the file manta.yaml contained the configuration above, then running:

manta capture manta.yaml my_logic_analyzer capture.v

Generates a Verilog module at capture.v which can then be instantiated in the testbench or FPGA design in which it is needed.

This is useful for two situations in particular:

Input Verification. Designs will often work in simulation, but fail in hardware. In the absence of any build errors, this usually means that the inputs being applied to the logic in simulation don't accurately represent those being applied to the logic in the real world. Playing signals back in simulation allows for easy comparison between simulated and measured input, and provides a nice way to check that the logic downstream is behaves properly.
Sparse Sampling. Sometimes designs will have a small number of inputs, but a huge amount of internal state. In situations like these, it may be more efficient to sample the inputs and simulate the logic, instead of directly sampling the state. For instance, debugging a misbehaving branch predictor in a CPU can be done by recording activity on the address and data busses and playing them back in simulation - which would use less FPGA resources than sampling the entire pattern history table.

Python API

The Logic Analyzer core functionality is stored in the Manta.LogicAnalyzerCore class in src/manta/logic_analyzer/__init__.py. This class contains methods for capturing data, exporting it as .vcd, .v or .csv files, or as a Python list.