There is limited & scattered knowledge available in the programmable logic space online. I recently stumbled upon Programmable Planet, a website dedicated to Programmable Devices.
Programmable planet is undoubtedly emerging as the best online resource for “all things programmable” as they call it. It has FPGA, VHDL concepts explained by industry experts - now that’s something new. These experts are very much active in the website & available for comments/clarifications.
If you haven’t gone through Programmable Planet, I suggest you do it right away.
Here’s the permalink —> http://bit.ly/MTNMAR
FPGA Blog was featured on EEWeb.com as Site of the Day on 9th June. Here’s the permalink to the site http://www.eeweb.com/websites/fpga-blog/
Configurable Logic Blocks (CLB) are programmable elements inside a Xilinx FPGA.
The figure shown below depicts FPGA Device fabric which is made up of several CLB’s (Snapshot taken from Xilinx PlanAhead Tool). Each of those boxes inscribed in blue are CLB’s which consists of slices & other components.
Virtex-5 CLB
A Virtex-5 CLB Tile consists of 2 SLICES. Figure depicts each CLB tile consisting of 2 slices. The components have been labelled for better understanding.
The above snapshot is taken from PlanAhead tool which is part of ISE Design Suite System Edition.
Each slice in a CLB consists of a 6 input LUT, Multiplexers (2:1), Carry logic made up of MUX & XOR gates, and D-Flip flops. All our logic gets mapped into these components using synthesis algorithms.
For more on FPGA architectures watch this space.
I’ve already emphasized about the coolness of Notepad++ (NPP) for VHDL editing. You can find those posts here & here.
This post is about must have Notepad++ Plugins. All plugins can be downloaded from sourceforge.net. You need to manually add the *.dll file into the plugin directory of Notepad++ installation folder. You can alternatively go to Plugin Menu & open Plugin Manager which shows the list of available plugins & you can install directly.
Must Have NPP Plugins List
- NPP VHDL - supports templates for Entity, signal declaration, test bench & port instantiation.
- NPP Compare
- MultiClipboard
- Xbrackets lite - auto closing of brackets
- NPP Export
How to download NPP Plugins?
All plugins can be downloaded from sourceforge.net.
You need to manually add the *.dll file into the plugin directory of Notepad++ installation folder. You can alternatively go to Plugin Menu & open Plugin Manager which shows the list of available plugins & you can install directly.
These are really powerful plugins once you start using them.
I’ll post about other interesting plugins once I find them. Watch this space for more.
The concept of utilizing FPGAs for DSP operations is fairly well understood, established, and recognized within the signal processing industry.
FPGA’s have DSP slices to implement signal processing functions. The DSP operation most commonly used is Multiply-Accumulate or MAC operation. A MAC block is also used as a building block for more complex DSP applications like filtering.
FPGA DSP slice essentially implements a MAC operation.
Xilinx calls this slice “XtremeDSP DSP48”. (probably because it handle a maximum of 48-bit addition)
Image illustrates DSP48E used in Virtex-5 devices & its features (Courtesy of Xilinx Inc)
There are 3 variants of DSP slices used in Xilinx FPGA’s- DSP48A, DSP48 & DSP48E.
(Image Courtesy of Xilinx Inc)
Xilinx has a good number of DSP elements in FPGA devices with SX series.
For more info on Comparison of conventional DSP processing vis-a-vis FPGA-based DSP watch this space.
You should read this if you’re working in VLSI or keen to join a VLSI design services firm.
Click on Heading or this link.
Click on the “Title” for a ‘free’ FPGA course.
Yes there is awesome free stuff available on the internet. Kudos to the creators of the page.
