29-05-2014, 10:39 AM
Industrial Training on ‘Latest tools on VLSI front end design’
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Xilinx
Xilinx Inc.is the world’s largest supplier of programmable logic devices,the inventor of the field programmable gate array(FPGA) and the first semiconductor company with a fables manufacturing model.The main aim of the Xilinx company is to provide more complete solutions that align FPGAs with software,IP cores,boards and kits to address focused target applications.The company aim is to use this approach to capture greater market share from application-specific integrated circuits(ASICs) and application-specific standard products(ASSPs).
FPGA(Field Programmable Gate Array):
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing—hence "field-programmable". The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL), similar to that used for an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) (circuit diagramswere previously used to specify the configuration, as they were for ASICs, but this is increasingly rare). Contemporary FPGAs have large resources of logic gates and RAM blocks to implement complex digital computations. As FPGA designs employ very fast IOs and bidirectional data buses it becomes a challenge to verify correct timing of valid data within setup time and hold time. Floor planning enables resources allocation within FPGA to meet these time constraints. FPGAs can be used to implement any logical function that an ASIC could perform. The ability to update the functionality after shipping, partial re-configuration of a portion of the design and the low non-recurring engineering costs relative to an ASIC design (notwithstanding the generally higher unit cost), offer advantages for many applications.
Configurable Logic Block:
A configurable logic block (CLB) is a basic component of an FPGA that provides the basic logic and storage functionality for a target application design. In order to provide the basic logic and storage capability, the basic component can be either a transistor or an entire processor. However, these are the two extremes where at one end the basic component is very fine-grained (in case of transistors) and requires large amount of programmable interconnect which eventually results in anFPGAthat suffers from area-inefficiency, low performance and high power consumption. On the other end (in case of processor), the basic logic block is very coarse-grained and can not be used to implement small functions as it will lead to wastage of resources.
FPGA Routing Architectures:
As discussed earlier, in an FPGA, the computing functionality is provided by its programmable logic blocks and these blocks connect to each other through programmable routing network. This programmable routing network provides routing connections among logic blocks and I/O blocks to implement any user-defined circuit. The routing interconnect of an FPGA consists of wires and programmable switches that form the required connection. These programmable switches are configured using the programmable technology.
Since FPGA architectures claim to be potential candidate for the implementation of any digital circuit, their routing interconnect must be very flexible so that they can accommodate a wide variety of circuits with widely varying routing demands. Although the routing requirements vary from circuit to circuit, certain common characteristics of these circuits can be used to optimally design the routing interconnect of FPGA architecture. For examplemost of the designs exhibit locality, hence requiring abundant short wires. But at the same time there are some distant connections, which leads to the need for sparse long wires. So, care needs to be taken into account while designing routing interconnect for FPGA architectures where we have to address both flexibility and efficiency. The arrangement of routing resources, relative to the arrangement of logic blocks of the architecture, plays a very important role in the overall efficiency of the architecture. This arrangement is termed here as global routing architecture whereas the microscopic details regarding the switching topology of different switch blocks is termed as detailed routing architecture. On the basis of the global arrangement of routing resources of the architecture, FPGA architectures can be categorized as either hierarchical or island-style .
Programming Technologies:
There are a number of programming technologies that have been used for reconfigurable architectures. Each of these technologies have different characteristics which in turn have significant effect on the programmable architecture. Some of the well known technologies include static memory , flash , and anti-fuse .
SYSTEM GENERATOR
System Generator is the industry’s leading high-level tool for designing high-performance DSP systems using FPGAs.
Develop highly parallel systems with the industry’s most advanced FPGAs
Provide system modeling and automatic code generation from Simulink® and MATLAB® (The Mathworks, Inc.)
Integrates RTL, embedded, IP, MATLAB and hardware components of a DSP system
A key component of the Xilinx DSP Targeted Design Platform
System Generator for DSP is part of both the DSP and System Editions of ISE® Design Suite. With System Generator for DSP, developers with little FPGA design experience can quickly create production quality FPGA implementations of DSP algorithms in a fraction of traditional RTL development times.
MATLAB FILTER DESIGN TOOL(FDA TOOL)
FILTER:
In signal processing, a filter is a device or process that removes from a signal some unwanted component or feature. Filtering is a class of signal processing, the defining feature of filters being the complete or partial suppression of some aspect of the signal. Most often, this means removing some frequencies and not others in order to suppress interfering signals and reduce background noise. However, filters do not exclusively act in the frequency domain; especially in the field of image processing many other targets for filtering exist. Correlations can be removed for certain frequency components and not for others without having to act in the frequency domain.
The drawback of filtering is the loss of information associated with it. Signal combination in Fourier space is an alternative approach for removal of certain frequencies from the recorded signal.