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For Checking Software without Hardware, FPGAs Are the AnswerPublication: Electronic Design Magazine October 2, 2008 -- An age-old truism in the system design realm is that the software is always ready to be checked out before first ASIC silicon is in hand. This leaves the members of the design team with an equally ageold conundrum: How are they to verify their first crack at an application stack and associated drivers without hardware to run them on? Waiting until that first silicon comes from the fab is an uncomfortable and often untenable option. The answer, of course, is prototyping with FPGAs, and it has been for some time. Fabricated as they are on advanced silicon processes, today’s FPGAs have more than enough performance to handle running the signal-processing algorithms, the drivers, the operating system (OS), and even applications on top of the OS. There are other ways of approaching this process with more traditional verification methodologies such as simulation and emulation, but they can be too slow for most teams. David Maliniak, Electronic Design Technical Editor | |
Reprinted from SOCcentral.com, your first stop for ASIC, FPGA, EDA, and IP news and design information. | |