Greetings!
Which FPGA are u using?
The code looks good. But i will take a deeper view.

I use the 5M160ZE64C4

And thank you for your involvement!

Nathex wrote:
> 5M160ZE64C4

This is a very small and old chip. Your Design is small too, but too big 
for this Chip.

Your Design fits perfectly in even very small up-to-date Chips.
Your Design just uses 7% of the smallest Spartan7.

So ... i would change the Chip and use newer Tools too.

The problem is that this is a project and the chip is imposed...
So if you say that the code is already optimized, I think I will reduce 
the matrix Led. Is it still possible to reduce the number of Logic 
elements by any ways?

Your Component display uses most Logic. This is because you use modulo 
operator. Modulo is implemented as a division which is not easy in 
Hardware.

If you would use numbers in 2**n operations would be much easier in 
hardware.

Why has mul_speed to be a multiple of 7?

You may use 8.

1

signal counter : unsigned(5 downto 0):=(others => '0');

2

begin

3

4

case counter(5 downto 3) is

5

   when "000" => rows_out <= row_1;

6

   when "001" => rows_out <= row_2;

7

   when "010" => rows_out <= row_3;

8

   when "011" => rows_out <= row_4;

9

   when "100" => rows_out <= row_5;

10

   when "101" => rows_out <= row_6;

11

   when "110" => rows_out <= row_7;

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   when others => rows_out <= "00000";

13

end case;

So the last 3 Bits of counter will be the used to divide the speed, it 
will be divided by 8.

Thank you !
This improvement removed +-50 logic elements.
I also reduced the matrix by 2 rows.
But 206 / 160 logic elements remain...

-I also had a question, I didn't catch very well the difference between 
variables and signal, which signals could be used as variables in the 
code and why?

In Hardware, there are no variables. But variables are a language 
construct which allows you to use combinatorical logic inside a process.
but you never need variables because you allways can use combinatorical 
signals insted. but variables make some things easy.

Ok thank you,

I would have a last question:
Do you know why are there so much multiplexers in the rtl viewer? The 
matrix is now a 5x4 matrix, we can see in the picture that there are 
more than 140 multiplexers. Do 5 multiplexers for each row would have 
been enough to access each elements of the matrix?

You use some constructs in a strange way. in display.vhd the cols_out, 
it is a buffer and gets shifted but ... it starts with all zero, shifts 
right and fills with zero. so it never changes?! The synthesizer removes 
the logic and ties cols static to zero.

What should button.vhd do? Do you really need an counter and an 
statemachine to do that? should it debounce? you just implemented a 
delay and the check if the input is still 1.

the lfsr can be written without variable.

Ok thank you I only have 41 logic elements. The main mistake lies in 
button.vhdl
and don't know exactly why but I will try to figure out.

-I did a mistake in display.vhdl : I wanted to switch on and off 
alternatively each row to display the matrix on the led matrix. The 
initial value of the shifted vector should in fact be "00001".

-The button entity has 2 purposes : deboucing the signal and converting 
the wide input from the button into a narrow pulse of 1 clk width. That 
is why I needed a counter to not send twice a pulse corresponding for 
the same press of the button.