Chip8 FPGA Emulator

CHIP-8 is a virtual machine invented in the 1970s, that when implemented on a FPGA allows the playback of a collection of classical games. New demos and simple games can also be implemented.

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Inspiration

The members of the group all learned about FPGAs in class, but had no experience designing a large scale project involving them. The CHIP-8 emulator seemed like a fun and challenging project for an otherwise professional use cases of the emerging technology.

What it does

The CHIP-8 Emulator is a virtual machine with a collection of retro arcade games, there is also implementation to create personal games.

How we built it

We used a hardware description language to program individual components such as a program counter, display, memory, alu, instruction decoder, controller input, timer, and a stack.

Challenges we ran into

Synthesis time for the program can be minutes long, adding valuable time to debugging times. VHDL error messages can also be cryptic, leading to intense bug finding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We completed the controller functionality. We have three instructions completely implemented.

What we learned

Unit testing is very important and very difficult on hardware projects.

What's next for Chip8 FPGA Emulator

Finish the display functionality, add the remaining instructions, create our own game to include.

Built With

  • fpga
  • vhdl
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