FPGA-based Implementation of Signal Processing Systems, 2nd Edition

6 Detailed FPGA Implementation Techniques

6.1 Introduction

Chapter 4 highlighted the wide range of technologies available for implementing DSP systems and Chapter 5 described the various FPGA offerings. The remaining chapters now describe the issues for implementing complex DSP systems onto FPGA-based heterogeneous platforms and also a single FPGA device! This encompasses considerations such as selection of a suitable model for DSP system implementation, partitioning of DSP complexity into hardware and software, mapping of DSP functions efficiently onto FPGA hardware, development of a suitable memory architecture, and achievement of design targets in terms of throughput, area and energy. However, it is imperative that the reader understands the detailed FPGA implementation of DSP functionality in order that this process is inferred correctly at both the system partitioning and circuit architecture development stages.

A key advantage of FPGAs is that the user can develop highly parallel, pipelined circuitry which can offer very high levels of performance. If these individual circuits can be optimized to exploit specific features of the underlying hardware, then this will offer increased speed or allow more processing functionality, or even both. This comes from efficiently mapping data paths or, in some cases, the controlling circuitry which controls the flow of data, into FPGA hardware. Controllers are usually mapped into finite state machines (FSMs) or implemented as software ...