The opportunities presented by modern FPGAs
DesignFocus article by Philip J. Mayo, Premier EDA Solutions Ltd.
It is estimated that to be involved in ASIC design these days, companies must be prepared to spend around $10M. Yet customisation of silicon and integration of on-board components into on-chip functionality is a compelling need. Those that do get involved in ASIC development are becoming dissatisfied due to four main drawbacks
- Projects falling behind schedule
- Significant increase in verification effort
- Designs not meeting performance and feature targets
- Poor integration between on-chip and off-chip development chain
In the SME-dominated UK electronics industry these factors often preclude companies from considering ASIC as a viable option. Yet there still is market demand for smaller products with “free” soft features. The promise of reconfigurability is also a major driver towards FPGA technology, offering a plethora of benefits and new opportunities.
Over the past two years a new range of high performance, low cost FPGAs have been launched from FPGA vendors presenting an opportunity for companies to design-in FPGAs and exploit a number of benefits:-
- Avoiding the non-returnable engineering costs associated with ASIC design
- Obtain better time to market by shortening the ASIC development cycle
- Use ASSPs combined with FPGAs to add security and customisation
- Reprogammability of products during design/development and indeed in the field
- Reusability of one hardware platform for various systems utilising one basic design
- Adapt products to multiple industry standards and protocols
This is achievable due to the fact that the increased capabilities of these devices provide a practical platform for a wide range of design applications. As an idea, with 300k to 600k system gates you have sufficient capability to accommodate a complete 8-bit embedded system (eg an 8051 microcontroller application, or PIK-based industrial controller). If you move to 1M system gates you could include a fairly complex 16-bit DSP or 32-bit embedded system (eg M16C + DSP56K real-time audio processing system).
The price, for these systems is, of course negotiable depending on volume, but one thing’s for sure, it isn’t getting more expensive. Currently Xilinx are toting their Spartan-3 at under $2 based on 500K pieces. While it is difficult to get an “eggs for eggs” comparison from other vendors, it is likely that they will all follow suit. To put things in perspective, the price for a 1M gate Spartan-3 was $12 about 18-months ago.
So we can now see that the opportunities presented by modern FPGA extends beyond the traditional “stick a bit of glue logic into a single device” concept. We have a practical platform for integrating a large range of microprocessor-based systems into a single, low-cost, reconfigurable device.
Applications of modern FPGAs |
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Perhaps now is the time to perform a trade off analysis of discrete microprocessor systems versus embedded ones?
Discrete devices |
Embedded systems |
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Looking to the future
Modern FPGA technology is not however a solution for all of the industry’s woes but does provide an interesting and tangible range of opportunities for forward-looking companies. The future promises to dramatically widen the capabilities of these devices as the FPGA vendors attempt to gain larger proportions of the cash spent traditionally on ASIC.
We can already see this, with recent announcements from the FPGA vendors
- Mixed signal FPGAs from Cypress and Actel move the devices away from the traditional digital arena
- Altera’s Cyclone II has been optimised for low power consumption – claiming half the power of competing devices
- Xilinx’s Virtex-4 is claimed to be the world’s fasted FPGA
It can only get better, not only for designers needing the leading edge devices but also for those designing somewhat behind the leading edge. The opportunities are numerous indeed and most are achievable today – what can modern FPGA technology do for you?
References
FPGA vendor sites
Other references
