Analog and inout

Introduction

You can define native tristate signals by using the Analog/inout features. These features were added for the following reasons:

Being able to add native tristate signals to the toplevel (it avoids having to manually wrap them with some hand-written VHDL/Verilog).
Allowing the definition of blackboxes which contain inout pins.
Being able to connect a blackbox’s inout pin through the hierarchy to a toplevel inout pin.

As those features were only added for convenience, please do not try other fancy stuff with tristate logic just yet.

If you want to model a component like a memory-mapped GPIO peripheral, please use the TriState/TriStateArray bundles from the Spinal standard library, which abstract over the true nature of tristate drivers.

Analog

Analog is the keyword which allows a signal to be defined as something analog, which in the digital world could mean 0, 1, or Z (the disconnected, high-impedance state).

For instance:

case class SdramInterface(g : SdramLayout) extends Bundle {
  val DQ    = Analog(Bits(g.dataWidth bits)) // Bidirectional data bus
  val DQM   = Bits(g.bytePerWord bits)
  val ADDR  = Bits(g.chipAddressWidth bits)
  val BA    = Bits(g.bankWidth bits)
  val CKE, CSn, CASn, RASn, WEn  = Bool()
}

inout

inout is the keyword which allows you to set an Analog signal as a bidirectional (both “in” and “out”) signal.

For instance:

case class SdramInterface(g : SdramLayout) extends Bundle with IMasterSlave {
  val DQ    = Analog(Bits(g.dataWidth bits)) // Bidirectional data bus
  val DQM   = Bits(g.bytePerWord bits)
  val ADDR  = Bits(g.chipAddressWidth bits)
  val BA    = Bits(g.bankWidth bits)
  val CKE, CSn, CASn, RASn, WEn  = Bool()

  override def asMaster() : Unit = {
    out(ADDR, BA, CASn, CKE, CSn, DQM, RASn, WEn)
    inout(DQ) // Set the Analog DQ as an inout signal of the component
  }
}

InOutWrapper

InOutWrapper is a tool which allows you to transform all master TriState/TriStateArray/ReadableOpenDrain bundles of a component into native inout(Analog(...)) signals. It allows you to keep your hardware description free of any Analog/inout things, and then transform the toplevel to make it synthesis ready.

For instance:

case class Apb3Gpio(gpioWidth : Int) extends Component {
  val io = new Bundle {
    val gpio = master(TriStateArray(gpioWidth bits))
    val apb  = slave(Apb3(Apb3Gpio.getApb3Config()))
  }
  ...
}

SpinalVhdl(InOutWrapper(Apb3Gpio(32)))

Will generate:

entity Apb3Gpio is
  port(
    io_gpio : inout std_logic_vector(31 downto 0); -- This io_gpio was originally a TriStateArray Bundle
    io_apb_PADDR : in unsigned(3 downto 0);
    io_apb_PSEL : in std_logic_vector(0 downto 0);
    io_apb_PENABLE : in std_logic;
    io_apb_PREADY : out std_logic;
    io_apb_PWRITE : in std_logic;
    io_apb_PWDATA : in std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_apb_PRDATA : out std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_apb_PSLVERROR : out std_logic;
    clk : in std_logic;
    reset : in std_logic
  );
end Apb3Gpio;

Instead of:

entity Apb3Gpio is
  port(
    io_gpio_read : in std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_gpio_write : out std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_gpio_writeEnable : out std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_apb_PADDR : in unsigned(3 downto 0);
    io_apb_PSEL : in std_logic_vector(0 downto 0);
    io_apb_PENABLE : in std_logic;
    io_apb_PREADY : out std_logic;
    io_apb_PWRITE : in std_logic;
    io_apb_PWDATA : in std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_apb_PRDATA : out std_logic_vector(31 downto 0);
    io_apb_PSLVERROR : out std_logic;
    clk : in std_logic;
    reset : in std_logic
  );
end Apb3Gpio;

Manually driving Analog bundles

If an Analog bundle is not driven, it will default to being high-Z. Therefore to manually implement a tristate driver (in case the InOutWrapper type can’t be used for some reason) you have to conditionally drive the signal.

To manually connect a TriState signal to an Analog bundle:

case class Example extends Component {
  val io = new Bundle {
    val tri = slave(TriState(Bits(16 bits)))
    val analog = inout(Analog(Bits(16 bits)))
  }
  io.tri.read := io.analog
  when(io.tri.writeEnable) { io.analog := io.tri.write }
}