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fpga trends and new products ... |
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Many applications which today run on simple microprocessors or even microcontrollers can benefit by migrating to FPGAs, which have become cheaper, more powerful, and even more power efficient. Even many ASIC designs are better off deployed in FPGAs, especially ones that cannot justify the high NRE's associated with ASICs. What is new and exciting in the FPGA space? In this month's newlsetter, we focus on new technologies in FPGA as well as highlight the top Internet resources where you can learn more, quickly. And, of course, don't miss our in-depth, Insiders' Guide: FPGAs.
contents:
- pcb / fpga tools - new products to integrate fpgas & pcbs.
- fpga deployment systems - national instruments & altium "make it easy."
- fpgas tutorials & websites - best websites for learning about fpgas.
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RTOS + hardware and tools that automatically integrate them!
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UnifiedLogic automatically configures the UnifiedLogic RTOS and quickly integrates peripherals around an FPGA for both prototype and production. Software developers can immediately start coding while hardware engineers begin on the product in final form. Click to - Read the whitepaper / Download the evaluation!
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pcb / fpga tools - new products to integrate fpgas & pcbs. |
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FPGAs are not deployed in a vacuum. Indeed, deployed embedded designs are really "systems" in which the integration of the PCB and the rest of the design can become a major difficulty, if not anticipated in advance. The two market leaders addressing the FPGA / PCB integration problem with great tools have historically been Mentor Graphics and Altium. Mentor Graphics, for example, announced last Fall, their PADS I/O Designer™ product. It provides for concurrent design of the FPGA and PCB by bridging these unique design flows and automating the various processes needed to implement today's high pin-count, high-speed FPGAs on PCBs. Starting with nothing or an early hardware design language (HDL) description or a top-level DxDesigner™ product, the FPGA-PCB interface is quickly defined with a variety of correct by construction, drag and drop PCB signal to FPGA pin assignment methods. (Release here).
Zuken, long a a leader in the PCB space, indicated its intentions to focus more strongly on FPGA / PCB integration with a series of Fall announcements as well. On 18 October 2007, for example, the company announced free simulation kits for users of Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs (here). And on 31 October, it partnered with Aldec on CADSTAR FPGA, which combines Aldec's Active-HDL Lite verification tool and Zuken's desktop PCB design suite, CADSTAR, allowing engineers to perform mixed language simulation for vendor neutral FPGAs within the CADSTAR environment. (Release here). That was followed up in late November with CADSTAR 10.0. Version 10.0 includes the addition of a large number of intelligent functionalities for schematic, library and PCB design, tighter integration with FPGA design tools, and the introduction of an alternative schematic front-end solution, E3.logic. That product includes the add-on module, CADSTAR FPGA, which supports one universal project manager that controls all the design files for simulation, synthesis, place and route and pin assignment to the PCB board, as well as the I/O synchronization between the FPGA device and the PCB board. (Release here). So, all in all, Zuken has aggressively entered the game with Mentor and Altium for third party PCB / FPGA solutions.
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fpga deployment systems - national instruments & altium "make it easy." |
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National Instruments was perhaps the first non-FPGA vendor to really understand the "FPGA revolution" and to try to make FPGAs easy for non-FPGA experts with its CompactRIO product. Their CEO, Dr. James Truchard, has positioned the company as a believer in "graphical system design," much of which will be facilitated by FPGAs. And the company recently released new versions of CompactRIO focused on high volume industrial machines (Release here). So, albeit at a high price point, NI is one place to go to consider using FPGAs if you are not (yet) an FPGA expert but want their benefits, easily.
But the really exciting news - and it is big news - is Altium's continued efforts to bring FPGAs and FPGA/PCB integration to the masses at a competitive price. That company dominated the recent DesignCon conference in Santa Clara with its announcement of the Altium Innovation Station. Their cool booth was not just "marketing cool" but also had numerous "hands on" stations to try out their new technologies. Innovation Station is "Altium Designer + NanoBoard," meaning that you have an easy combination of hardware and software to take an FPGA design concept easily from early design to real production.
Using the Altium Innovation Station, designers can design in the soft domain, without
having to pre-determine the hardware platform on which the product will be delivered. Its
unified environment allows them to easily exploit today's low-cost, high-performance
programmable devices to create and deliver the intelligence they need to create
sustainable differentiation. They can then quickly and easily test, analyze and debug the
design using the Desktop NanoBoard reconfigurable hardware development platform
which is integrated with Altium Designer. ... Designers then deploy to one of a new range of deployment NanoBoards - off-the-shelf hardware options that let designers deploy their designs as physical hardware without the need to manufacture any custom hardware.
(Release here)
The company did a great job at DesignCon and even has a wonderful video on the concept. If you are interested in FPGAs, especially in deployed systems, it is really the first place to start in your design search.
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fpgas tutorials & websites - best websites for learning about fpgas. |
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Excited by FPGAs? Interested? Just keeping an eye on them? The good news is that there are many sites on the Internet that can educate you on FPGAs; the bad news is that it can be hard to find useful, non-biased sites on FPGAs. Here is a quick overview to the newer and/or better sites to investigate FPGAs.
The big FPGA vendors (Xilinx, Altera, Lattice, and Actel) of course all have tons of product information on their websites, and a few have the marketing savvy to create useful "learning" microsites as well. Check out the Xilinx Education Site as well as Altera's Technology Center and Actel's Training Courses. All are great, but of course biased to support each vendor's perspective.
A second great way to catch up on new FPGA developments is to take a seminar, whether online or off. The best one going on now is the Xilinx / Avnet series which runs through late March, worldwide. Or sign up for a forthcoming or archived FPGA webinar - great for designers outside the USA/Canada.
Finally, there are useful Internet tutorials and overviews. You can start with our own FPGA Insiders' Guide. Among the better sites are FPGA Guide, FPGA Central, Programmable Logic DesignLine, FPGA World & Conference, and FPGA Journal & eLetter. You can find eg3.com's picks for all the top sites, including books, here, and complete FPGA indexing here. Don't forget the useful newsgroup comp.arch.fpga - members are pretty good at providing helpful questions and answers. Finally, a new site and new concept is FPGA Seek, which is a Google-based filtered search of FPGA vendors. Enjoy!
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