Component and hierarchy

Introduction

Like in VHDL and Verilog, you can define components that could be used to build a design hierarchy. But unlike them, you don’t need to bind them at instantiation.

class AdderCell extends Component {
  //Declaring all in/out in an io Bundle is probably a good practice
  val io = new Bundle {
    val a, b, cin = in Bool
    val sum, cout = out Bool
  }
  //Do some logic
  io.sum := io.a ^ io.b ^ io.cin
  io.cout := (io.a & io.b) | (io.a & io.cin) | (io.b & io.cin)
}

class Adder(width: Int) extends Component {
  ...
  //Create 2 AdderCell
  val cell0 = new AdderCell
  val cell1 = new AdderCell
  cell1.io.cin := cell0.io.cout   //Connect cout of cell0 to cin of cell1

  // Another example which create an array of ArrayCell
  val cellArray = Array.fill(width)(new AdderCell)
  cellArray(1).io.cin := cellArray(0).io.cout   //Connect cout of cell(0) to cin of cell(1)
  ...
}

Tip

val io = new Bundle{ … } :

Declaring all in/out in a Bundle named io is probably a good pratice. If you call your bundle io, Spinal will check that all elements are defined as input or output

Input / output definition

Syntax to define in/out is the following :

Syntax	Description	Return
in/out Bool	Create an input/output Bool	Bool
in/out Bits/UInt/SInt[(x bit)]	Create an input/output of the corresponding type	T
in/out(T)	For all other data types, you should add the brackets around it. Sorry this is a Scala limitation.	T
master/slave(T)	This syntax is provided by the spinal.lib. T should extends IMasterSlave : Some documentation is available here	T

There is some rules about component interconnection :

Components can only read outputs/inputs signals of children components
Components can read their own outputs ports values (unlike VHDL)

Tip

If for some reason, you need to read a signals from far away in the hierarchy (debug, temporal patch) you can do it by using the value returned by some.where.else.theSignal.pull().

Pruned signals

SpinalHDL only generate things which are required to drive outputs of your toplevel (directly or indirectly).

All other signals (the useless ones) are removed from the RTL generations and are indexed into a list of pruned signals. You can get this list via the printPruned and the printPrunedIo function on the generated SpinalReport.

class TopLevel extends Component {
  val io = new Bundle{
    val a,b = in UInt(8 bits)
    val result = out UInt(8 bits)
  }

  io.result := io.a + io.b

  val unusedSignal = UInt(8 bits)
  val unusedSignal2 = UInt(8 bits)

  unusedSignal2 := unusedSignal
}

object Main{
  def main(args: Array[String]) {
    SpinalVhdl(new TopLevel).printPruned()
    //This will report :
    //  [Warning] Unused wire detected : toplevel/unusedSignal : UInt[8 bits]
    //  [Warning] Unused wire detected : toplevel/unusedSignal2 : UInt[8 bits]
  }
}

If you want to keep a pruned signals into the generated RTL for debug reasons, you can use the keep function of that signal :

class TopLevel extends Component {
  val io = new Bundle{
    val a,b = in UInt(8 bits)
    val result = out UInt(8 bits)
  }

  io.result := io.a + io.b

  val unusedSignal = UInt(8 bits)
  val unusedSignal2 = UInt(8 bits).keep()

  unusedSignal  := 0
  unusedSignal2 := unusedSignal
}

object Main{
  def main(args: Array[String]) {
    SpinalVhdl(new TopLevel).printPruned()
    //This will report nothing
  }
}

Generic(VHDL) / Parameter(Verilog)

If you want to parameterize your component, you can give parameters to the constructor of the component as follow :

class MyAdder(width: BitCount) extends Component {
  val io = new Bundle{
    val a,b    = in UInt(width)
    val result = out UInt(width)
  }
  io.result := io.a + io.b
}

object Main{
  def main(args: Array[String]) {
    SpinalVhdl(new MyAdder(32 bits))
  }
}

I you have several parameters, it is a good practice to give a specific configuration class as follow :

case class MySocConfig(axiFrequency  : HertzNumber,
                       onChipRamSize : BigInt,
                       cpu           : RiscCoreConfig,
                       iCache        : InstructionCacheConfig)

class MySoc(config: MySocConfig) extends Component {
    ...
}