Instruction on multiple clock cycle

[Altera_Forum]

Hi everyone !  

 I'm working on a project where I generate a timestamp through a counter that is incremented by 1 every clock cycle. The thing is, every time I load the timestamp value in my buffer, the value is not incremented by 1 but by the size of my timestamp, which is 8 bits. So I will have my first value at 0 and then the second value at 7 the third one at 15 and so on ....  I need to increment my counter no every clock cycle, but every 8 clock cycles, in order to solve the problem.  So i would like to know if such a thing is possible, and if so, how could I do it ? I've tried to do it with a loop or with some wait statement, but so far nothing worked.  Here is the code of my counter :   LIBRARY IEEE; USE IEEE.STD_LOGIC_1164.ALL; USE IEEE.STD_LOGIC_UNSIGNED.ALL;   ENTITY counter IS PORT(  clk_i : in std_logic;  count : out std_logic_vector(7 DOWNTO 0)  ) ; end counter;   ARCHITECTURE rtl OF counter IS   SIGNAL s_count : STD_LOGIC_VECTOR(7 DOWNTO 0);   begin process (clk_i)  begin  if clk_i'event AND clk_i = '1' then  s_count <= s_count + 1;  end if;   end process;  count <= s_count; end;  Hoping some of you can help !  Thanks in advance.  Cordially, David.

[Altera_Forum]

your s_count is 32 bits. Your count is 8 bits. How did it compile?

[Altera_Forum]

Thank you I changed It, my mistake. 

It's 32 bits on the board, but I put 8 bits in simulation in order to simplify the results

[Altera_Forum]

How do you read the counter as timestamp. You may not catchup with its speed. Normally people read timestamp from system clock.

[Altera_Forum]

Well my counter will be the timestamp of my system. It could have been a clock as well. 

Then I'll write it in the firsts pixels of my image. I have a 16MHz clock, and my video is at 30 frames per second. At that rate I have more timestamps than I have new images, avoiding the problem of having the same timestamp for several images. My micro-processor will pick a timestamp every time an image is refreshing. The thing is my timestamp is serialized to be send on my slave board and then parallelized to be treated. I need to increment my counter no every clock cycle, but every 8 clock cycles, in order to solve some parts of the problem.