PiEstimator

This IP core carries out a Monte Carlo experiment that will estimate the value of pi.

Using the IP in Vivado

1. Create a new MicroBlaze or Zynq block design by following the Getting Started with Vivado IP Integrator tutorial.

2. Open the provided addPiEstimators.tcl script and set the num_instances variable according to how many instances of this IP core you would like to add to the block design. Each instance requires 8 DSP slices. Divide the number of DSP slices that your FPGA has by eight to determine the maximum number of instances that your FPGA can support. The number of DSP slices that your FPGA has can be found at the resource center for your particular board. The resource centers for Digilent's FPGA boards are linked from this page.

3. In Vivado's Tcl console, use the cd command to navigate to the directory containing the addPiEstimators.tcl script. Then, run the script by typing "source ./addPiEstimators.tcl".

4. Continue following the Getting Started with Vivado IP Integrator tutorial until you have launched the Xilinx SDK and created a new Empty Application project.

5. Copy the main.c file for running the Monte Carlo experiment to the src directory within the project you just created. The main.c file can be found by following this path in the Project Explorer:

   design_1_wrapper_hw_platform_0 > drivers > PiEstimator_v1_0 > examples.

   The first directory listed in the path above may be named differently if you named your block design differently from the default name, but will still contain the words "wrapper" and "platform."

6. Open the copy of the main.c file within your project. Set the ITERATIONS macro to the number of coordinate points that you want each instance of this IP core to generate. The more points that are generated, the more accurate the estimation of pi will be.

7. Continue following the Getting Started with Vivado IP Integrator tutorial.