Week of 21 September 2026
I completed the first onboarding lab by reading and following the instructions. The main items I learned are, how to install WSL, how to utilize git and Github, and running module/testbench in VSCode. There was minimal problems, with all issues being quickly fixed by rereading the instructions. One issue I had was a command not working. I solved the issue by updating and upgrading all the packages.
Work: * Onboarding Lab 1: Completed Lab #1
Week of 28 September 2026
I completed the second onboarding lab by reading and following the instructions. I learned how to write basic combinational, sequential, and FSM-based RTL. I had some difficulty implementing the FSM (more specifically the always_comb) until I realized that I just had to update the state depending on input x, which made the structure like a bunch of if/else statements. Otherwise there were no other major difficulty.
Work: * Onboarding Lab 2: Completed Lab #2
Week of 5 October 2026
I completed the third onbaroding lab by reading and following the instructions. When I was writing the tests for accumulator, I had intially ran into trouble because I didn’t have a full understanding of what #1 did. After realizing that it was needed in order to get the new value, it fixed the issue. In general, I had trouble using clks because I did not understand the need for negedge before realizing I needed it in order to change values before the next rising edge.
The FIFO stores items and returns them in the order they were sent in. A writing ptr and reading ptr are used to detemrine what object is being read/written next. Then, count is there to tell if the FIFO is empty/full because it determines whether write and read can be used.
Randomized testing is super helpful because it allows me to check multiple combinations of reading and writing requests. The reference model helped because it simplified the whole process, acting similar to a function so I could just recall it multiple times to save time from writing so much.
Work: *Onboarding Lab 3: Completed Lab #3
Week of 12 October 2026
Didn’t do much work this week. I attended the meeting on Tuesday and skimmed through the documentation in the micro-architecture google drive folder.
Week of 19 October 2026
I attended the meeting on Tuesday and was assigned to do work for ALU and Control Unit. Didn’t do any work this week, except taking a closer look through documentation and other material to gain a better understanding of the architecuture.