Future%20FPGA%20Development

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Future FPGA Development

• Duane McDonald
• Digital Electronics 3

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Introduction

• Seventeen years ago, Xilinx and Alteranow the
  elders of the FPGA industrywere four and five
  years old, respectively Actel was just three. In
  those days, programmable devices consisted of
  PALs (programmable array logic devices) and CPLDs
  (complex programmable logic devices), which were
  essentially small sets of AND-OR planes plus a
  few registers to actually create something useful
  like a state machine.
• Then Xilinx came up with the SRAM-based field
  programmable gate array (FPGA) that could hold
  from 1,000 to more than 5,000 logic gates.
• Actel quickly followed with its antifuse
  technology. Antifuse technology produced
  nonvolatile parts, making designs more secure
  SRAM-based devices.

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Introduction (contd)

• Altera came next, they developed a toolset that
  included support for schematics and hardware
  development languages, a simulator, timing
  analysis, synthesis, and place-and-route.
• Zooming ahead to the present day, there are still
  just a handful of FPGA companies. Xilinx and
  Altera dominate while Actel, QuickLogic, Lattice,
  and Atmel each share the remainder of the market
  with products aimed at specific applications and
  needs. SRAM is the dominant technology, though
  antifuse is used for applications where the
  protection of intellectual property is paramount.

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Developments
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Moores Law Fueling Reprogrammable FPGA Advances
Mature FPGA Product Technology
Developing FPGA Product Technology

• Future
• Process Technology
• Traditional Scaling is starting to be effected
  by the fundamental material limits of the planar
  CMOS process
• Equivalent Scaling or the assimilation of new
  materials, structures and functional integration
  will drive continued scaling

180 nm
150 nm
130 nm
90 nm
65 nm
45 nm
32 nm
22 nm
8 nm
1999 2001 2003 2005
2007 2009 2011 2013
2015 2017
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Architectural Evolution FPGAs
Programmable System in a Package
Domain-optimized System Logic
System Logic

• FPGA Fabric
• Block RAM
• Embedded Registers and Multipliers
• Clock Management
• Multi-standard Programmable IO
• Embedded Microprocessor
• Multigigabit Transceivers
• Embedded DSP-optimized Multiplers
• Embedded Ethernet MACs

Device Complexity and Performance
Platform Logic

• FPGA Fabric
• Block RAM
• Embedded Registers and Multipliers
• Clock Management
• Multi-standard Programmable IO
• Embedded Microprocessor
• Multigigabit Transceivers

Block Logic

• FPGA Fabric
• Block RAM
• Embedded Registers and Multipliers
• Clock Management
• Multi-standard Programmable IO

Glue Logic

• FPGA Fabric
• Block RAM

• FPGA Fabric

2005
1985
1992
2000
2002
2004
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Platform FPGAs

• The latest trend in FPGAs is the inclusion of
  specialized hardware in the form of hard cores.
  Vendors realize that if large numbers of their
  customers need a particular function, it's cost
  effective to include fixed cells inside the FPGA.
  
• Platform FPGAs, those containing either soft- or
  hard-core processors, will dominate embedded
  system designs 15 years from now. For many
  designs, the advantages of using a single,
  programmable device that may include multiple
  processors, interfaces, and glue logic will make
  it the preferred choice over using today's
  discrete devices on a printed circuit board.
• Platform FPGAs are being developed to have a mix
  of soft- and hard-core processors. Soft cores
  will be the choice for the least complex designs
  and for new designs that don't have legacy code
  to support. Hard-core processors will be the
  choice for complex designs and for designs that
  need to run legacy code. High-end designs will
  use multiple processors, perhaps some soft,
  others hard.

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Development tools

• The most significant area for the future lies in
  the creation of new development tools for FPGAs.
  As programmable devices become larger, more
  complex, and include one or more processors, a
  huge need will open up for tools that take
  advantage of these features and optimize the
  designs.
• Hardware designers can use hardware description
  languages like Verilog to design their chips at a
  high level. They then run synthesis and layout
  tools that optimize the design.
• As FPGAs come to incorporate processors, the
  development tools take software into account to
  optimize at a higher level of abstraction.
  Hardware/software codesign tools will be a
  necessity, rather than a luxury.
• Before long, platform FPGAs containing fixed or
  configurable processors and custom hardware will
  dominate the field of hardware design. By then,
  hardware/software codesign will be the norm.

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Use in computing

• Performance of FPGAs as a compute platform exceed
  conventional processors in all three performance
  vectors i/o bandwidth, memory bandwidth and
  computation. Implementing an effective
  programming model is the main issue the industry
  is working hard to solve.

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Use of Soft core processors

• An emergent trend is to move from custom-made
  microprocessors to soft-core processors embedded
  within FPGAs. This trend has been driven by the
  long-term supply uncertainties of companies that
  provide custom-made microprocessors. This
  uncertainty is due to their inability to take
  advantage of new process technologies and
  geometries.
• Xilinx now offers both a 32-bit soft processor
  core called MicroBlaze and an 8-bit solution
  called PicoBlaze.

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More on Xilinx

• With the Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor, the
  designer has the luxury of a different approach.
  They can now start with a processor core and
  build the peripheral set to meet their exact
  requirements. Silicon waste is reduced to zero
  since the designer will only implement what they
  need. Software design complexity is reduced
  because no code need ever be written to disable
  unwanted processor functionality. The creation of
  unusual processor configurations, which can be
  changed at any time to suit changes in the
  specification, is reduced to a simple task.
• Even if after ten to fifteen years of field use,
  when the FPGA hardware might itself be nearing
  the end of its life, then the soft processor core
  can simply be dropped into its new FPGA host
  utilizing the same C code and almost all of the
  same hardware design files as well.

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Soft core Xilinx processors
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Conclusion

• In conclusion, the industry of FPGAs is rapidly
  growing with technology being optimized and
  modified daily by a great number of designers.
  This is due to the programmability and
  configurablilty of the FPGA architecture i.e. it
  is built to be developed not just used.
• In the future it is quite possible to see all
  processors, computers and electronic devices
  being run or at least developed with the use of
  these amazing devices with FPGAs not being
  developed as a compute platform and size scaling
  increasingly reducing every year.
• It is also important to note that both the
  hardware and software development stages of FPGAs
  have become equally important with the two now
  depending on one another more than ever for
  quicker advances and better design.

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References

• Reconfigurable FPGAs for Space Present and
  Future Rick Padovani, Xilinx, Inc. MAPLD 2005
• The future of programmable logicBy Bob Zeidman,
  Courtesy of Embedded Systems Programming
• Comparing and Contrasting FPGA and Microprocessor
  System Design and Development By Karen Parnell,
  Roger Bryner
• Lessons Learned from FPGA Developments Prepared
  by Sandi Habinc