FPGA-based Implementation of Signal Processing Systems

7

Rapid DSP System Design Tools and Processes for FPGA

7.1 Introduction

The evolution of computing architectures, spurred by the relentless growth in silicon integration technology, has seen the development of a number of new DSP implementation technologies. These platforms include single chip multiprocessor or heterogeneous system-on-chip solutions and indeed, FPGA. As highlighted as early as Chapter 1, the evolution in the computing architectures for this technology has for a number of years, outpaced the designers' ability to implement DSP systems using them. This observation has been popularly termed, the design productivity gap (IRTS 1999), and its main causes are a major limiting factor in the industry drive towards realising SoC design flows. It is forcing the electronic design automation (EDA) industry, to significantly reconsider the concepts of system design (Keutzer et al. 2000, Lee et al. 2003, Rowson and Sangiovanni-Vincentelli 1997).

Modern DSP implementation platforms are composed of a mixture of heterogeneous processing architectures, including microcontroller unit (MCU) Von Neumann-like processing architectures, increased computationally capable processors such as VLIW DSP microprocessors, or dedicated hardware for efficient task implementation. The evolution of the modern FPGA means that it is also a potential candidate as an implementation platform, either as a standalone SoPC, or as a complement to existing software-based platforms. FPGA-based embedded platforms ...