Why do we choose FPGAs? Usually because we want to get our design to market faster, cut our design cost and risk, and have more flexible, versatile products at the end. Because the process of customizing the FPGA is getting increasingly efficient, the development of a working board is rapidly becoming the long pole in the tent of our design process. Today, design teams are spending as much time getting the FPGA to work properly on the board and connected to the outside world as they are on any other major phase of the process.

Wouldn’ … Read More → "Mod Modules"

System platform-based design(1) is one of a number of high-level initiatives to tackle the spiraling problems of design complexity, hardware/software integrity and cost. The approach aims to stratify a system design problem into bite-size layers. It also aims to deliver higher, unified abstractions from existing digital EDA flows. Each platform must:

-map an instance in an (upper) application space to another in a (lower) architecture space
-communicate constraints between these spaces in forms suitable to each
-package the application solution in a form suitable for … Read More → "Programmable Analog for Platform-Based Design"

The contest begins. On the left side of the hall (the “blue” corner), the FPGA design team iterates through the design loop with their high-performance design tools, looking for the optimal placement to reach timing closure. As paths are probed and placements are optimized, it becomes apparent that the problem is the pin assignment. After swapping a few I/O constraints around and re-running place-and-route, the design clears timing analysis with flying colors. Positive slack for all!

On the right side of the hall (the “red” corner), this is all bad news. The … Read More → "Board Room"

Increased gate counts and higher clock speeds in programmable logic ICs have resulted in higher current requirements while smaller device geometries are driving lower core supply voltages. Simultaneously, new communications and memory technologies (DDR, DDR2) are requiring additional new supply voltages. Table 1 shows this low voltage trend in the generational progression of Xilinx FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays).

Table 1. Voltage Requirements of Xilinx FPGA Families

Cyrus Tsui doesn’t believe in the “Flanking Attack.” He likes the head-on confrontation, even with an entrenched opponent. He’s not intimidated by numbers or humbled by setbacks. He is a true competitor, and has been in the industry long enough to know that the rules of the game change regularly. This month, Lattice Semiconductor, where Cyrus has been CEO for over 15 years, made its most significant strategic announcement in years, challenging industry leaders head-on in what promises to be one of the most aggressive and lucrative battles of the decade for … Read More → "Cyrus Tsui"

Introduction

The applications of Digital Signal Processing (DSP) continue to expand, driven by trends such as the increased use of video and still images and the demand for increasingly reconfigurable systems such as Software Defined Radio (SDR). Many of these applications combine the need for significant DSP processing with cost sensitivity, creating demand for high-performance, low-cost DSP solutions.

General-purpose DSP chips and FPGAs are two common methods of implementing DSP functions, although, until now, the choice of an FPGA implementation has been limited to … Read More → "DSP for Less"

Pay attention now, there will be a quiz.

In today’s lesson, we’re going to pick the best FPGA. Well, more accurately, we’re going to learn how to pick the best FPGA. The actual proof will be left as an exercise for the student. Since we’re engineers, we can’t rely on any touchy-feely stuff. It doesn’t matter who has the coolest name. We don’t even care who’s got the slickest icon printed on top of their BGA packages. We need a formula. … Read More → "Terminology Tango 101"

Imagine watching a professional sports contest (let’s say a basketball game), starting sometime in the middle. In this particular game, there is no visible scoreboard. You watch one team score, then the other. Each seems to be making progress and amassing points, but without a scorecard, you really have no way to tell who’s winning or losing.

There were two exciting announcements in the emerging low-cost, high-volume FPGA market this week. The key issue in this contest is, of course, price. Unfortunately, amidst the flurry of features, claims and specifications, price is the … Read More → "Low Cost Leapfrog"

I always believed that I was interested in electronics as a kid. I now see that I was wrong. After chatting with Ken McElvain at this year’s DAC, I learned that I was merely a poser, dabbling in the discovery of technology. Ken McElvain was interested in electronics. While I sat in my room with my Radio Shack 100-in-1 kit hooking up the multi-colored wires to the spring-loaded terminals, carefully constructing every pre-made project in the book, Ken McElvain was in the backyard with his dad, blowtorching TTL components off discarded circuit boards to stuff into wire-wrap … Read More → "Ken McElvain"

FPGAs are a great solution for prototyping because they offer designers the flexibility to test a design in the application without incurring large NRE charges. Design iterations can be performed using the same FPGA prototype device until the final working solution is attained. However, a completed design often requires a different set of priorities: lower cost, lower power and better performance. Structured ASICs offer a solution to this shift from a prototype emphasis to production design requirements at less risk than a comparable cell-based ASIC implementation. Structured ASICs also offer several key performance advantages over FPGAs, primarily in the … Read More → "Prototype to Production"