The massive increase in processing required for next generation compute-intensive applications, such as wireless communication and image processing, has created a gap between off-the-shelf DSP performance and market needs. In many cases, discrete DSPs are simply running out of steam to serve the new communications, multimedia, and consumer applications. In recent years, users have increasingly looked toward alternative solutions ranging from ultra-high performance full-custom ASICs to highly flexible general-purpose CPUs. Somewhere in the middle are FPGAs, providing a cost-effective balance (Figure 1) between programmability and high performance. With their processing flexibility ranging from serial to parallel computing, and … Read More → "Need to accelerate the creation of technology-independent DSP hardware?"

Multi-madness is upon us these days. Multi-core, multi-thread, and multi-processor mania has made a mess of the previously well-ordered software tools and operating systems market, creating abundant opportunities for innovation. Single processor computing is at its heat limit, and the new way to get more cpu power focused on your problem is to pile on the processors and parallelize your application.

Much has been made in the technical press about various approaches for automatically parallelizing general-purpose computing. However, there are occasional outstanding opportunities to create domain-specific solutions that can elegantly and efficiently elevate the performance of mission-critical … Read More → "Parallelizing PCB"

Over the past few years, FPGAs have risen from a whisper to a roar at the Embedded Systems Conference. This year, at the newly re-relocated event (back in San Jose after a few-year foray up to San Francisco), there was barely a booth on the show floor without boards bearing FPGAs connected to cameras, displays, LEDs, remote-control cars, bins of bouncing balls, Dance Dance Revolution sensor pads, and even to the inner-workings of our old, remarkably destructive friend Cyclonebot’s 220-pound, half-inch-plate-titanium-clad frame.

Originally, … Read More → "Undertow of Ubiquity"

FPGAs are making big inroads in the embedded systems space as system-on-chip platforms. The recipe is solid – whip together a processor with some peripherals all connected to an on-chip bus or switch fabric. Add a little off-chip RAM and Presto – instant embedded system, ready to be changed at a moment’s notice, even after it’s in your customers’ hands. From 50,000 feet, it looks like the ideal solution for leading-edge embedded development. Of course, like any seemingly idealized solution, it has its … Read More → "C to FPGA"