FPGA-Based DSP - Signal Processing Systems - page 693

FPGA-Based DSP

John McAllister

Abstract Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) offer an excellent platform for
embedded DSP systems when real-time processing beyond that which multipro-
cessor platforms can achieve is required, and volumes are too small to justify
the costs of developing a custom chip. This niche role is due to the ability of
FPGA to host custom computing architectures, tailored to the application. Modern
FPGAs play host to large quantities of heterogeneous logic, computational and
memory components which can only be effectively exploited by heterogeneous
processing architectures composed of microprocessors with custom co-processors,
parallel software processor and dedicated hardware units. The complexity of these
architectures, coupled with the need for frequent regeneration of the implementation
with each new application makes FPGA system design a highly complex and unique
design problem. The key to success in this process is the ability of the designer to
best exploit the FPGA resources in a custom architecture, and the ability of design
tools to quickly and efficiently generate these architectures. This chapter describes
the state-of-the-art in FPGA device resources, computing architectures, and design
tools which support the DSP system design process.

1 Introduction

In the mid-1980s, the pioneers of FPGA technology realised that whilst at that
time transistors were scarce and as a result precious to circuit designers, Moore's
Law would eventually make transistors so cheap that they could be used as a
low cost collective in macro-blocks [ 30 ] . If these macro blocks permitted use as
“ programmable ” logic, i.e. were functionally flexible to perform any simple logic

J. McAllister ( )
Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT),
Queen's University Belfast, UK
e-mail: [e-mail]