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I'm trying to make a very simple single cycle CPU in VHDL. My machine code is stored in a ROM that was made by the Altera MegaWizard. The first word that is stored in this ROM is 0x1111. After writing a testbench for the CPU, I found that there is an initial delay of 1 cycle when reading from this ROM. Is this normal and is there a way to fix this? Would this delay even matter in my CPU?

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Depending on how you configured the MegaWizard settings, this is expected. If the ROM is contained in a block RAM, there is always at least 1 cycle read latency. Basically you assert the address at t=0, then on the next clock cycle (t=1) the address is loaded into the address registers in the BRAM. The data then appears at the data output of the memory ready to be clocked in at t=2.

If you use an MLAB then the address inputs can be specified to not be registered which means the data is ready to be clocked in at t=1 - but this can reduce the FMAX of the system - because you have removed the clock cycle of pipelining.


The latency may or may not be an issue depending on how you design your CPU. As it is a fixed latency - it will always be 1 cycle - then you can account for this in your CPU design by adding pipelining to the instruction and data fetching - e.g. fetch the next instruction while processing the current one.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm making a single cycle CPU, so no pipelining. In the MegaWizard I am unable to select the MLAB, only M9K is available and the rest is grayed out. \$\endgroup\$
    – gilianzz
    Jun 28, 2015 at 14:05
  • \$\begingroup\$ @gilianzz probably not available due to the size of the memory - MLABs are very small. There is another option which is to have the memory run at twice the frequency of the CPU - have a clock enable in the CPU which means that it isn't clocked during the cycle that the address registers are loaded. \$\endgroup\$ Jun 28, 2015 at 14:19

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