FPGA Technology Overview: Advantages, Components, and Applications

1. FPGA Technology Overview Carl Lebsack * Some slides are from the “Programmable Logic” lecture slides by Dr. Morris Chang

2. What’s an FPGA? FPGA – Field Programmable Gate Array

3. Logic Standard Logic ASIC Gate Arrays Programmable Logic Devices Cell-Based ICs Full custom ICs FPICs SPLDs CPLDs FPGAs

4. How do you make a “Programmable” circuit? • One time programmable • Fuses (destroy internal links with current) • Anti-fuses (grow internal links) • PROM • Reprogrammable • EPROM • EEPROM • Flash • SRAM - volatile } non-volatile

5. How do you program an FPGA? • Create a circuit design • Graphic circuit tool • Verilog • VHDL • AHDL • Compile the design for the selected device • Download the compiled configuration

6. FPGAs offer many advantages over ASICs • Small development overhead • No NRE (non-recurring engineering) costs • Quick time to market • No minimum quantity order • Reprogrammable

7. What are the Guts of an FPGA? • Basic Components • LUT (look-up-table) • Flip-Flops • Multiplexors • I/O Blocks • Programmable switching matrices • Interconnect • Clocks

8. Xilinx FPGA Structure Configurable Logic Blocks I/O Blocks Programmable Interconnects

9. CMOS SRAM Cell

10. config_out input[0:2] 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 output clock config_in 3-LUT

11. 2 Slice CLB

12. LE

13. LAB

15. IOB

16. More Guts • Additional components • RAM blocks • Dedicated multipliers • Tri-state buffers • Transceivers • Processor cores • DSP blocks

17. Dedicated Arithmetic Structures in FPGAs QuickLogic Altera Xilinx

18. Power PC in Virtex-II Pro • Embedded 300+ MHz Harvard Architecture Core • • Low Power Consumption: 0.9 mW/MHz • • Five-Stage Data Path Pipeline • • Hardware Multiply/Divide Unit • • Thirty-Two 32-bit General Purpose Registers • • 16 KB Two-Way Set-Associative Instruction Cache • • 16 KB Two-Way Set-Associative Data Cache • • Memory Management Unit (MMU) • - 64-entry unified Translation Look-aside Buffers (TLB) • - Variable page sizes (1 KB to 16 MB) • • Dedicated On-Chip Memory (OCM) Interface • • Supports IBM CoreConnect™ Bus Architecture • • Debug and Trace Support • • Timer Facilities

19. Excalibur Embedded Solution • Integrates Embedded Processors With Programmable Logic Device • Delivers System-on-a-Programmable-Chip (SOPC) • Programmable Flexibility • PLD Hardware • Embedded Software • Compute Performance • High Performance Processor • Data Path Hardware • Customer Configuration • Microprocessor Peripherals • Hardware Logic • Faster Time-to-Market Excalibur Processor Memory High Performance I/O Logic Complete SOPC Solution

20. ARM in Excalibur • Industry-standard ARM922T 32-bit RISC processor core operating up to 200MHz • ARMv4T instruction set with Thumb extensions • Memory management unit (MMU) included for real-time operating systems (RTOS) support • Harvard cache architecture with 64-way set associative separate 8-Kbyte instruction and 8-Kbyte data caches • Embedded programmable on-chip peripherals • ETM9 embedded trace module to assistant software debugging • Flexible interrupt controller • Universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) • General-purpose timer • Watchdog timer

21. Altera DSP-Block-Configuration Options and Features

22. Xilinx Slices/CLBs PowerPC cores Altera LEs/LABs ARM cores/Softcores FPGAs come in a wide variety Numbers of subcomponents varies Special features vary Manufacturers use own terminology

23. Stratix Device Overview

24. FPGA Design • Main components are generally done as custom designs • Layout is very regular and automation could assist in cell placement

25. Stratix FPGA Layout

26. PLD device density and VLSI technology *note: Xilinx Virtex-II Pro XC2VP100 (9/16/2003)

27. More Information • www.xilinx.com • www.altera.com