Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition User Guide: Design Recommendations

ID 683082
Date 8/03/2023
Public

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1.4.1.10. RAM with Byte-Enable Signals

The RAM code examples in this section show SystemVerilog and VHDL code that infers RAM with controls for writing single bytes into the memory word, or byte-enable signals.

Synthesis models byte-enable signals by creating write expressions with two indexes, and writing part of a RAM "word." With these implementations, you can also write more than one byte at once by enabling the appropriate byte enables.

Verilog-1995 doesn't support mixed-width RAMs because the standard lacks a multi-dimensional array to model the different read width, write width, or both. Verilog-2001 doesn't support mixed-width RAMs because this type of logic requires multiple packed dimensions. Different synthesis tools may differ in their support for these memories. This section describes the inference rules for Intel® Quartus® Prime Pro Edition synthesis.

Refer to the Intel® Quartus® Prime HDL templates for parameterized examples that you can use for different address widths, and true dual port RAM examples with two read ports and two write ports.

SystemVerilog Simple Dual-Port Synchronous RAM with Byte Enable

module byte_enabled_simple_dual_port_ram  
( 
    input we, clk,
    input [ADDRESS_WIDTH-1:0] waddr, raddr,// address width = 6 
    input [NUM_BYTES-1:0] be, // 4 bytes per word
    input [(BYTE_WIDTH * NUM_BYTES -1):0] wdata, // byte width = 8, 4 bytes per word
    output reg [(BYTE_WIDTH * NUM_BYTES -1):0] q // byte width = 8, 4 bytes per word
);

   parameter ADDRESS_WIDTH = 6;
   parameter DEPTH = 2**ADDRESS_WIDTH;
   parameter BYTE_WIDTH = 8;
   parameter NUM_BYTES = 4;

   // use a multi-dimensional packed array
   //to model individual bytes within the word
   logic [NUM_BYTES-1:0][BYTE_WIDTH-1:0] ram[0:DEPTH-1]; 
     // # words = 1 << address width

	// port A
   always@(posedge clk)
   begin
	   if(we) begin
          for (int i = 0; i < NUM_BYTES; i = i + 1) begin
            if(be[i]) ram[waddr][i] <= wdata[i*BYTE_WIDTH +: BYTE_WIDTH];
          end
      end
      q <= ram[raddr];
   end
endmodule

VHDL Simple Dual-Port Synchronous RAM with Byte Enable

library ieee;
use ieee.std_logic_1164.all;
library work;

entity byte_enabled_simple_dual_port_ram is
generic (DEPTH      : integer := 64;
         NUM_BYTES  : integer :=  4;
         BYTE_WIDTH : integer :=  8
);
port (
    we, clk : in  std_logic;
    waddr, raddr : in  integer range 0 to DEPTH -1 ;     -- address width = 6
    be   : in  std_logic_vector (NUM_BYTES-1 downto 0);   -- 4 bytes per word
    wdata: in  std_logic_vector((NUM_BYTES * BYTE_WIDTH -1) downto 0);   -- width = 32
    q    : out std_logic_vector((NUM_BYTES * BYTE_WIDTH -1) downto 0) ); -- width = 32
end byte_enabled_simple_dual_port_ram;

architecture rtl of byte_enabled_simple_dual_port_ram is

    --  build up 2D array to hold the memory
    type word_t is array (0 to NUM_BYTES-1) of std_logic_vector(BYTE_WIDTH-1 downto 0);
    type ram_t is array (0 to DEPTH-1) of word_t;

    signal ram : ram_t;
    signal q_local : word_t;

    begin  -- Re-organize the read data from the RAM to match the output
        unpack: for i in 0 to NUM_BYTES-1 generate    
            q(BYTE_WIDTH*(i+1) - 1 downto BYTE_WIDTH*i) <= q_local(i);
    end generate unpack;
        
    -- port A
    process(clk)
    begin
        if(rising_edge(clk)) then 
            if(we = '1') then
                for I in (NUM_BYTES-1) downto 0 loop
                    if(be(I) = '1') then
                        ram(waddr)(I) <= wdata(((I+1)*BYTE_WIDTH-1) downto I*BYTE_WIDTH);
                    end if;
                 end loop;
            end if;
            q_local <= ram(raddr);
        end if;
    end process;  
end rtl;