Kraken IO Processor: A pio-like learning project
WIP POST I WILL ADD MORE INFO TO THIS LATER!!!
The Raspberry Pico line of microprocessors quickly became a beloved piece of hardware of hobbyists and in academia. A particularly nice feature that I have not seen anywhere else are the interface protocol engines that allow to do SPI, WS2812b and more with better timing precicion than normal GPIO bit-banging.
In a couple of projects I am trying to do a clean-room implementation of a small core that is capable to run programs compiled with the pioasm compiler of raspberry pi.
In particular I have 3 implementations right now:
- A WIP core that tries to be "feature-complete" ("Kraken")
- A FPGA implementation of the Kraken - so far it can send UART and do GPIO blinks. That works great
- A smaller version that fits on 2x1 IHP26B tile of TinyTapeout ("mini Kraken" or "Squid")
Yes I call the cores "Kraken" because it sounds cool and also I can use cute graphics of krakens as mascots.
Kraken
Mini-Kraken
See here the project area of the submission - not yet submitted. The deadline is the 21. of September.