Newbie questions

Hi everyone,

This is my first post to the list.  I'm new to MyHDL, using it with a
Digilent "Arty" board and Vivado to learn FPGAs and HDL in general.  So far,
I've found the documentation to be excellent and I haven't had any problems
with simple LED flashing, PWM, etc.  Along the way I've accumulated some
questions however:

1) I would like to parameterize certain hardware modules like I see in the
examples, e.g. I have the following "Timepulse" module:

def Timepulse(reset, clk, q, interval=int(100e6)):
    """ Generate a pulse for one clock cycle every <interval> clock cycles
    
    q       timepulse output, with period equal to one clock
    """
    count = Signal(intbv(0, min=0, max=interval))

Here "interval" is intended to be taken as a constant, for the purposes of
simulation and conversion.  However, the Python code

        if count == interval - 1:
            count.next = 0
        else:
            count.next = count + 1

        if count == interval - 1:
            q.next = 1
        elif count == 0:
            q.next = 0

is converted to the following Verilog:

        if (($signed({1'b0, count}) == (100000000 - 1))) begin
            count <= 0;
        end
        else begin
            count <= (count + 1);
        end
        case (count)
            (-'h1): begin
                q <= 1;
            end
            'h0: begin
                q <= 0;
            end
        endcase

I don't understand where all the signed-arithmetic handling comes from. 
Intuitively, I thought the Verilog should be the same whether my expression
uses "interval-1" or "interval", because both are large positive constants
within the range of the count intbv.  But in fact when I take away the -1,
the signed-number handling goes away too.  What am I missing?


2) When converting to Verilog, do the input/output port names always follow
the names in the definition of the top-level Python function?  E.g. in the
StopWatch tutorial, we have

def StopWatch(tens_led, ones_led, tenths_led, startstop, reset, clock):

so upon conversion, the Verilog code uses the names "tens_led", "ones_led",
etc. as the inputs and outputs.  But when targeting a dev board, I would
like to assign those ports to existing port names defined in my constraints
file.

It seems like there should be a way to give these names when I instantiate
StopWatch, instead of having to make the names match between my Python code
(at a high and logical level) and my constraints file (at a low and hardware
level).  Am I missing some alternative?


Thanks,

Mark

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