https://pranav083.github.io/tags/de1-soc/Recent content in DE1-SoC on Pranav KumarHugo -- gohugo.ioenCopyright © 2016–2030, Pranav KumarTue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400https://pranav083.github.io/post/project/road-rage-rtl/Tue, 05 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400https://pranav083.github.io/post/project/road-rage-rtl/ <p><strong>ECE 4515 — Digital Design II · Virginia Tech · Spring 2026</strong> <strong>Team project</strong> with Rahul Muthuraman Shanmugam.</p> <p>A top-down lane-dodge racing game, implemented entirely in hardware on a Terasic DE1-SoC (Cyclone V 5CSEMA5F31C6). No processor, no software — the game is a state machine driving datapath modules at pixel rate.</p> <hr> <h2 id="why-build-a-game-in-rtl">Why build a game in RTL</h2> <p>A game is a deceptively good digital design exercise. It forces real-time constraints that cannot be missed (a VGA scanline waits for nobody), multiple interacting state machines, memory-backed graphics, asynchronous inputs that must be synchronised and debounced, and a pipeline whose latency has to be accounted for exactly — because a one-cycle error shows up as a visible column of wrong pixels.</p>