Today’s FPGAs Offer High-Performance DSP Capabilities FPGAs have included dedicated DSP processing capabilities for nearly ten years. In that time, the evolution of DSP performance in FPGAs has increased to about 700 GMacs/sec., while during the same timeframe DSP processors have experienced only about a 10 GMacs/sec. increase in performance. Some applications require only a moderate amount of DSP performance that is equivalent to the performance offered in a low-cost FPGA like Cyclone IV with up to 90 GMacs/sec. This is still greater than the equivalent performance of multiple DSP processors, which many applications require. In these applications, a single Stratix IV FPGA can replace many DSP processors thereby significantly reducing power, board space, and cost while still delivering more equivalent DSP performance. The key drivers of high-performance DSP processing requirements exist in wireless infrastructure, video broadcast equipment, medical imaging, and military applications. FPGAs are becoming the defacto programmable DSP platform that addresses these requirements. But what makes an FPGA so incredible for DSP processing? There are several important factors including the sheer number of multipliers, the amount of distributed on-chip memory bandwidth, massive I/O bandwidth, as well as the complete flexibility in datapath architecture enabled by programmable logic. What is not as well known is that FPGAs also deliver programmable DSP processing at a lower power, while reducing overall system cost and reducing board space. DSP designers can implement a board with one or several FPGAs that would require dozens of DSP processors and possibly multiple boards. Because FPGAs support vertical migration across different capacities within the same package, a single board and system design can be easily scaled from low-end to the highest capabilities without requiring multiple board designs. This provides major advantages for product line flexibility by reducing engineering design time and verification costs. An example of how this flexibility is used in wireless infrastructure applications, is where FPGAs are used to implement flexible radio cards that support various standards and through vertical migration, RF bandwidth densities. The newer OFDMA-based LTE standard has configurable RF bandwidth that allows service providers to convert their licensed spectrum to LTE proportional to the rate of user adoption. Flexible, low cost FPGA-based solutions allow a mix of LTE and older CDMA and GSM systems to share the same antenna and radio head systems. Mixing multiple wireless technologies requires digital up and down conversion, with GMAC/s rates in excess DSP processor capabilities. Additionally, new functions that increase power amplifier efficiency and lower cost are implemented digitally, requiring substantially more GMAC/s. The high DSP processing power required as well as the ability to reconfigure the radio head hardware with just an FPGA firmware update, are driving the use of FPGAs in this application. As the data bandwidth requirements rise, high speed serial interface I/O increase in these systems. FPGA vendors now offer these interfaces, along with the superior GMAC/s DSP capabilities, in low, mid-range, and high end FPGAs. Once the radio head configuration is stabilized, the FPGA vendor that offers a seamless FPGA to ASIC conversion can provide further cost and power savings. FPGA technology has evolved in system level development tools that enable development of flexible, scalable, maintainable, and high-performance architectures. Both FPGA vendors and EDA companies have developed tools including DSP system modeling tools, system integration tools, control processing IP, automatic C to hardware accelerators, and DSP optimized application IP that further enhance the overall design process. In summary, the core signal processing of high-performance systems has moved to FPGA implementation. FPGAs deliver the highest performance, programmable digital signal processing available from any semiconductor device, as well as offering the most flexible system architecture solution available spanning performance, low-power, low-price, product breadth, and lifecycle requirements. ...................................................................... Tags : DSP, Digital Signal Processing, DSP with FPGA Source : http://chipdesignmag.com/display.php?articleId=3881?Facebook
Today’s FPGAs Offer High-Performance DSP Capabilities
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