Because development boards are readily available, many FPGA designers make the mistake of relying on them as their primary embedded processor debug and verification environment. Can you get the job done that way? Well, yes you can, but then you can also dig a trench with a teaspoon – if you have enough time.

Large devices allow you to stuff a whole system into the FPGA, but debugging these complex systems with limited visibility – and a one-day turnaround for synthesis plus place and route – can consume weeks of your precious time.

Hardware/software … Read More → "The Case for Hardware/Software Co-Verification"

Soft sourceless music flows through the dim-lit scene. The faint smell of incense lingers. The embedded system designer sitting back on the recliner is a relaxed subject, miles from the high-stress world of project schedules and power budgets. The white-robed researcher speaks softly through the microphone, pausing just long enough for the subject’s responses to her word-associations to be heard. “Fire”… “hot”, “Pillow”… “soft”, “Schedule”… “late”, “Water”… “clear”, “Budget”… “over”, “FPGA& … Read More → "Chillin’ with QuickLogic"

Conventional wisdom says that Charles Dickens’s novels are so long because he was paid by the word. This is not strictly true, as his novels were published in serial form, and Dickens was paid by the installment. The net result is the same, however, as the volume of reading required to mine the gold from his classic works is legendary. Plot lines that could reasonably be summarized in a few succinct paragraphs drag on through chapter after chapter of flowery, flowing, profitable prose.

It appears sometimes that the PR professionals in FPGA and … Read More → "Thinking Like Xilinx"

Sometimes, even the experts get fooled. Anybody who is intimately familiar with the FPGA industry would probably have predicted the same thing. With the epic Godzilla versus Mothra game of marketing and product one-upsmanship raging between rivals Xilinx and Altera for the past decade, the next move is often simple to anticipate. In the most recent rounds of action: Xilinx packs a hard punch introducing low-cost Spartan-3 as the first 90nm FPGA. Altera strikes back with Stratix-II as the first 90nm high-speed, high-density flagship offering. Each side then counters with the piece they’re missing, Altera with Cyclone … Read More → "SerDes Sweet Spot"

At HARDI Electronics, we started working seriously with ASIC prototyping in FPGAs about five years ago, and we quickly realized what the challenges were. First, it was obvious that the prototyping system needed to have the required capacity corresponding to the gate size of the ASIC. In year 2000, that was quite a problem since maximum FPGA capacity was a couple of hundred thousand ASIC gates and the ASICs were 10-100 times larger (1-10 million gates). Since then, the FPGA gate capacity has grown significantly. Today the largest available FPGA, the Xilinx Virtex-4 LX200, has an equivalent ASIC gate capacity … Read More → "How to Make An ASIC Prototype"

It’s a lifelong dream for many people to actually fly a plane on their own. The daring, carefree, wind-in-your hair pilot personality, however, is a bit of a myth. In real life, a good pilot is more like a good engineer. You plan and check everything meticulously. You want to find and fix any potential problems before you leave the ground, because once the wheels are up, it’s too late. Imagine you’ve been taking flying lessons now for several months, and you’ve finally logged the training hours, completed all of your … Read More → "Top-Flight Prototypes"