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Introduction to FPGA: History, Applications, and Advantages

Learn about Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), their history, applications in various industries, and the advantages they offer over ASICs. Explore the use of FPGA in digital signal processing, aerospace and defense systems, medical imaging, and more.

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Introduction to FPGA: History, Applications, and Advantages

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  1. BFYPhiladelphia2012

  2. FPGA stands for Field programmable Gate Array. • They are integrated circuits that can be programmed by the user after fabrication (i.e., in the field). • Programming an FPGA requires a Hardware Description Language (the two most common are Verilog and VHDL)

  3. ASICS Discrete Gates FPGA’s Microprocessors (AND, OR, NOR, Counters) (Arduino) LabView

  4. ¿Why use FPGA’s? • If you want to chip to do a specific task and that chip isn’t commercially available, you have two options • Design and fabricate an ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) • Or use an FPGA

  5. ¿Between ASIC’s and FPGA’s which is better? • Traditionally ASIC’s are faster, and use less energy than FPGA’s. • Additionally, ASIC’s are much cheaper to mass produce. • However, although the second (and 3rd and 4th) ASIC only costs a few cents , the first chip costs millions of dollars and months of work • And if there’s an error, you have to start all over again. • With FPGA’s it’s possible to create an implement a design cheaply and rapidly • And to correct errors • And in fact with current technology the performance of FPGA’s is approaching that of ASIC’s.

  6. History • The first commercially available FPGA appeared on the market in 1985 • It was the SC2064 and had only 64 logic blocks • Since then the number of configurable logic blocks has increased to millions while their physical size has gotten smaller. • Nowdays the sale of FPGA’s is dominated by Xilinx and Altera that control 80% of the sales.

  7. ¿How do FPGA’s work? • The most common architecture is to have a matrix of configurable logic blocks with configurable inputs and outputs. output How does a LUT work? Look-up Table (LUT) D Flip- Flop Inputs Clock Toregister (store) values

  8. FPGA’s versus Arduino’s • Microprocessors and CPU’s (Central Processing Units) have a math processors, a memories and are very versatile. • Although FPGA’s are more limited in the fact that they lack a math processor and memories, FPGA’s offer true parallelism. That is to say that they really can do several operations at once (they don’t simply give the appearance of parallelism by switching tasks quickly. • In the end there is probably a place for microprocessors and FPGA’s. • But I wanted to introduce my students to FPGA’s because I feel that my students have so much more experience programming software than hardware.

  9. Hybrids • Xilinx Virtex-II PRO and Virtex-4 are FPGA’s that have embedded processors • The Mitrion Virtual Processor de Mitrionics is an example of a processor made from FPGA’s that can be customized to the needs of the user. • Xilinx and Altera offer FPGA’s and processors in the same integrated circuit.

  10. Applications of FPGA’s • digital signal processing, • software-defined radio, • aerospace and defense systems, • ASIC prototyping, • medical imaging, • computer vision, • speech recognition, • cryptography, • bioinformatics, • computer hardware emulation, • radio astronomy, • metal detection • and a growing range of other areas.

  11. Our Boards: You have to use limited input and output ports creatively since they fill up fast The 7-seg displays don’t have a built-in driver (but it’s good practice to build one) and are multiplexed They are relatively cheap $49 (student) $59 (academic) Free Xilinx WebPack ISE Free Digilent Adept

  12. ¿Do you always have to start from scratch? • No, IP cores (intellectual property) are available

  13. One last thing fascinates me! • In 1995 Adrian Thomson took various groups of 50 bits chosen at random to program an FPGA. • Then he tested the FPGA to see if it could distinguish between two tones. • As you might expect the arbitrary code didn’t work very well, but a few of the combinations of 0’s and 1’s were able to perform better than others. • Adrian selected the best performers and reproduced them by mixing their “DNA” with other successful codes and occasional new mutations. • After 100 generations not much happened.

  14. After 220 generations the circuits could reproduce the input, but not much more than that. • After 650 generations the circuits could identify the 1kHz signal. • After 4,000 generations the circuits could distinguish between the 1kHz and the 10kHz tone. • Looking at the circuit that evolved it turned out that it was using just 37 of the 100 gates and used a lot of feedback. • That’s neat, but the most interesting thing is that 5 of the gates weren’t even connected to the rest and any engineer would say that they were irrelevant. But the circuit didn’t work without them. • Apparently the FPGA had discovered and utilized a magnetic field effect between nearby gates. • This was one of the first examples of evolvable hardware

  15. FPGA’s force you to be aware of the hardware • Allocation of recourses (space for numbers) • No Start • For loops • While loops • Parallelism • Deceptively similar to software • You’ll have to correct for contact bounce in the switches and buttons

  16. Video Examples

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