FPGAs 101

7.2. What Is Implementation?

Implementation is the process that maps the synthesized netlist to the specific or target FPGA's resources and interconnects them to the FPGA's internal logic and I/O resources. During this process, the physical design layout is determined. This is the final development process that manipulates the design before it is programmed into a device. Each manufacturer performs implementation differently, but the concept is basically the same. The process described in this section is like the one performed by Xilinx's implementation tool. The implementation process takes four steps to convert the mid-level netlist to a final programming file—translate, map, place and route, and generate programming file, see Figure 7-2 ...