diff options
| author | Megan Wachs | 2021-03-18 16:47:58 -0700 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | GitHub | 2021-03-18 16:47:58 -0700 |
| commit | f1ad5b58e8a749d558758288d03ce75bf6b8ff9c (patch) | |
| tree | 2150d6f41a55f81c9f4cf3b037b715cb75ea617f /docs/src/explanations/functional-module-creation.md | |
| parent | 2a56c6540e914611ac12647e157aec4c5c595758 (diff) | |
Reorganize website docs (#1806)
Updates to chisel3 documentation for website:
* guard code examples with mdoc and fix errors encountered along the way
* move some website content here vs splitting the content across two repos
* Bring in the interval-types and loading memories content so that it will be visible from the website
* remove all references to the wiki (deprecated)
* Remove reference to Wiki from the README
* fix tabbing and compile of chisel3-vs-chisel2 section
* Appendix: faqs now guarded and compile
* FAQs: move to resources section
Diffstat (limited to 'docs/src/explanations/functional-module-creation.md')
| -rw-r--r-- | docs/src/explanations/functional-module-creation.md | 120 |
1 files changed, 120 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/docs/src/explanations/functional-module-creation.md b/docs/src/explanations/functional-module-creation.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..407edb1d --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/src/explanations/functional-module-creation.md @@ -0,0 +1,120 @@ +--- +layout: docs +title: "Functional Module Creation" +section: "chisel3" +--- + +# Functional Module Creation + +Objects in Scala have a pre-existing creation function (method) called `apply`. +When an object is used as value in an expression (which basically means that the constructor was called), this method determines the returned value. +When dealing with hardware modules, one would expect the module output to be representative of the hardware module's functionality. +Therefore, we would sometimes like the module output to be the value returned when using the object as a value in an expression. +Since hardware modules are represented as Scala objects, this can be done by defining the object's `apply` method to return the module's output. +This can be referred to as creating a functional interface for module construction. +If we apply this on the standard mux2 example, we would to return the mux2 output ports when we used mux2 in an expression. +Implementing this requires building a constructor that takes multiplexer inputs as parameters and returns the multiplexer output: + +```scala mdoc:silent +import chisel3._ + +class Mux2 extends Module { + val io = IO(new Bundle { + val sel = Input(Bool()) + val in0 = Input(UInt()) + val in1 = Input(UInt()) + val out = Output(UInt()) + }) + io.out := Mux(io.sel, io.in0, io.in1) +} + +object Mux2 { + def apply(sel: UInt, in0: UInt, in1: UInt) = { + val m = Module(new Mux2) + m.io.in0 := in0 + m.io.in1 := in1 + m.io.sel := sel + m.io.out + } +} +``` + +As we can see in the code example, we defined the `apply` method to take the Mux2 inputs as the method parameters, and return the Mux2 output as the function's return value. +By defining modules in this way, it is easier to later implement larger and more complex version of this regular module. +For example, we previously implemented Mux4 like this: + +```scala mdoc:silent +class Mux4 extends Module { + val io = IO(new Bundle { + val in0 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val in1 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val in2 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val in3 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val sel = Input(UInt(2.W)) + val out = Output(UInt(1.W)) + }) + val m0 = Module(new Mux2) + m0.io.sel := io.sel(0) + m0.io.in0 := io.in0 + m0.io.in1 := io.in1 + + val m1 = Module(new Mux2) + m1.io.sel := io.sel(0) + m1.io.in0 := io.in2 + m1.io.in1 := io.in3 + + val m3 = Module(new Mux2) + m3.io.sel := io.sel(1) + m3.io.in0 := m0.io.out + m3.io.in1 := m1.io.out + + io.out := m3.io.out +} +``` + +However, by using the creation function we redefined for Mux2, we can now use the Mux2 outputs as values of the modules themselves +when writing the Mux4 output expression: + +```scala mdoc:invisible:reset +// We need to re-do this to allow us to `reset` +// and then re-define Mux4 +import chisel3._ + +class Mux2 extends Module { + val io = IO(new Bundle { + val sel = Input(Bool()) + val in0 = Input(UInt()) + val in1 = Input(UInt()) + val out = Output(UInt()) + }) + io.out := Mux(io.sel, io.in0, io.in1) +} + +object Mux2 { + def apply(sel: UInt, in0: UInt, in1: UInt) = { + val m = Module(new Mux2) + m.io.in0 := in0 + m.io.in1 := in1 + m.io.sel := sel + m.io.out + } +} +``` + +```scala mdoc:silent +class Mux4 extends Module { + val io = IO(new Bundle { + val in0 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val in1 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val in2 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val in3 = Input(UInt(1.W)) + val sel = Input(UInt(2.W)) + val out = Output(UInt(1.W)) + }) + io.out := Mux2(io.sel(1), + Mux2(io.sel(0), io.in0, io.in1), + Mux2(io.sel(0), io.in2, io.in3)) +} +``` + +This allows us to write more intuitively readable hardware connection descriptions, which are similar to software expression evaluation. |
