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FPGAs for DSP, Second Edition is a unique
report that focuses on FPGAs as a solution for DSP applications. Since
the publication of BDTI’s first FPGAs for DSP report in 2002, FPGAs
have become increasingly popular for some DSP applications. In the
latest generation of chips, major FPGA vendors have enhanced their
products and provide more mature and sophisticated tools and software
to support implementation of DSP applications.
BDTI examines recent DSP developments in FPGAs and explains why FPGAs
are, increasingly, an attractive solution for implementing DSP. The
report compares key offerings from FPGA vendors and discusses important
differentiators. BDTI also compares FPGAs to mainstream DSPs to help
answer the question of when to use an FPGA and when to use a DSP.
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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- What is an FPGA
- Digital Signal Processors and Other Implementation Technologies
- FPGAs for DSP
- Design Flows
- Altera Stratix II and Xilinx Virtex-4
- Benchmark Results for Stratix II, Virtex-4, and DSPs
- Use an FPGA, a Processor, or Both?
- Conclusions, Trends
Excerpts from FPGAs for DSP, Second Edition:
On Altera and Xilinx tools:
Xilinx's AccelDSP and Altera's Nios II C2H Compiler both offer a
means to generate hardware from high-level languages. Altera's C2H
generates hardware that is called as a custom Nios II processor instruction,
whereas hardware created with AccelDSP is integrated into a design in the same
way as other custom-designed and off-the-shelf blocks. This could make C2H more desirable for designers who
want to eliminate bottlenecks in their C applications with minimal design effort. AccelDSP,
on the other hand, offers designers more flexibility in optimizing hardware implementations.
A designer could, for instance, add pipeline stages to increase clock frequencies,
or choose to unroll loops, changing the distribution of logic resources.
From the analysis of benchmark results:
The FPGA benchmark implementations in this report were produced by expert engineers
at Altera and Xilinx with full access to all of the support infrastructure those
organizations provide. Even so, we estimate that the effort involved was on the order
of 6-12 man-months for each of the benchmark implementations. In contrast, the
DSP processor implementations were produced by BDTI engineers with about 6-8
man-weeks of effort.
On trends in FPGAs for DSP:
Another interesting aspect of FPGA flexibility is that FPGAs can readily
incorporate processors, but DSPs, GPPs, ASICs, and ASSPs cannot readily
incorporate configurable logic. In BDTI's consulting practice we
are often called upon to help system developers select chips for their
next-generation products. In many cases the previous design incorporates
a DSP and an FPGA. In some cases, this combination will continute to be appropriate for
the next-generation design. But in other cases, there may be strong incentives to
consolidate. In these cases, it is more likely that the FPGA will be able to
subsume the functionality handled by the DSP than the reverse. This dynamic
favors increased adoption of FPGAs.
Pricing, Shipping, and Ordering Information
First copy: $2,495
Additional copies: $650 each
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