An Approach to Introduce the Concept of Lexical Analysis through FPGA Based Finite State Machines
Aneliya Ivanova, Nikolay Kostadinov · 2023
This paper presents an approach to introduce to the students the concept of the first phase of the compiler - the lexical analysis by developing FPGA based FSMs recognizing different types of lexemes. The aim is to be achieved some level of succession between two undergraduate courses, namely “Design Technology” and “Compilers”, and to be introduced a primary idea of a regular expression, a formal description of a finite automaton, and a state-transition graph of finite automaton. The expectation is that the implementation of such FSMs through a hardware modeling language and programmable logic will be a good starting point for further implementation of the lexical analyzer with a high-level programming language.