[J-core] HDMI

[Cedric BAIL]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 2:55 PM, BGB <cr88192 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/18/2016 1:47 PM, Cedric BAIL wrote:
>> As I have been quite interested by having a working 2D graphics stacks
>> with the j-core once the turtle is out, I have started to learn a bit
>> about how to write an HDMI output. I still need to learn more about
>> vhdl and would love any pointer to a good book/tutorial.
>>
>> I have figured out that actually we don't need to implement HDMI, but
>> only a basic DVI as HDMI support it as the possible simplest
>> implementation. This should make our life quite easier as finding DVI
>> specification is way easier
>> (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~stc/FAQs/Video/dvi_spec-V1_0.pdf). Reading the
>> specification, there is one very interesting point. All device should
>> support the "
>> Low Pixel Format Support" which is a 640x480 @60Hz with 24bits per
>> pixels. Even the frequency is well defined (Pixels at 25.175 MHz and
>> Horizontal Frequency of 31.5 kHz, but I needs to check that HDMI
>> follow the same requirements as I can only find 25.2Mhz/31.5kHz/60Hz
>> and 25.175Mhz/31.47KHz/59.94Hz on my own HDMI output).
>>
>> I would argue that being able to handle that resolution with j-core
>> seems sane and the most likely working target. Anything above would be
>> quite hard to get usable. I guess it would simplify the work on the
>> vhdl if we only need to handle one resolution and one timing. Would
>> this clocks be any problem in the current design of the turtle board ?
>>
>> There are a lot of article on Internet that are interesting to read to
>> understand what is going on and how things should work with HDMI. I
>> have found this link http://fpga4fun.com/HDMI.html to be a good
>> starting point. If anyone has other link to share, it would be
>> interesting.
>>
>> I just wanted to drop this here, so that if anyone start to be looking
>> at the topic, they would have a better/quicker understanding. It also
>> could be a starting point to discuss the general design of how a 2D
>> unit could work itself. I have a lot of question and will just drop a
>> few of them here, just to start a possible discussion. How/When does
>> the kernel get notified of the rendering of a frame ? Do we need to
>> expose a way to list resolution even if we do handle just one ? How do
>> we store video memory (around 1.2MB per scanout buffer) ? As I would
>> like to add a simple blitter unit to provide hardware plane, where
>> should that be ? Inline with the scanout or completely independent ?
>> What about color conversion ?
>>
>> That's just a few questions I am starting to think about and it would
>> be nice to see people share their though on the topic. Especially with
>> the constraint of the turtle/j-core in mind, we need to be smart to
>> manage to get something usable !
>
>
> I am not sure, but a few thoughts.
>
> my thought here is that the 250MHz needed to pull off HDMI output may be out
> of reach for lower end FPGA's, but I am not sure.

Why do you think we need 250Mhz ? For the lower pixels format, aka
640*480 @60Hz, we only seems to need 25Mhz. Is there something I
missed ? Also the turtle will only come with an HDMI output, like the
RPi do.
-- 
Cedric BAIL