Microprocessor I

Chapter 1 – Introduction to Microprocessor-

based Embedded Systems Design
Dr. Mohamad Mroué

Lebanese University - Faculty of Engineering

Beirut, Lebanon
1
Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms

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Plan of the course: Microprocessor I
 General Introduction
‒ Background and History
‒ VLSI Technology
‒ Digital Design Platforms
• Microprocessor-based Design
• Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
• Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
• Digital System Design Using FPGA

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Plan of the course: Microprocessor I
 Computer System Architecture
‒ Numbering and Coding Systems
‒ Floating Point Representations
‒ Classification of Microprocessors
‒ Internal organization of computers
‒ Memory technology and evolution
‒ Internal architecture of Microprocessors
‒ Sequential and pipelined processing

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Plan of the course: Microprocessor I
 Part I: 8085 Microprocessor
‒ 8085 Architecture & Memory Interfacing

‒ Interfacing I/O Devices

‒ The 8085 Instructions and Programming Techniques

‒ Stack and Subroutines

‒ Programming Counters, Time Delays and Interrupts

‒ Serial Input/Output and Data Communication

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Plan of the course: Microprocessor I
 Part I: Textbook

Microprocessor Architecture, Programming, and

Applications with the 8085 , ©2009 R. S. Gaonkar et al.

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Plan of the course: Microprocessor I
 Part II: PIC 18F Microcontroller
‒ Internal Architecture

‒ Assembly and C Language Programming

‒ I/O Port Programming

‒ Timers and Interrupts programming

‒ ADC, DAC and Sensor Interfacing

‒ Embedded Systems Design using PIC18F

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Plan of the course: Microprocessor I
 Part II: Textbook

PIC Microcontroller and Embedded Systems 1/e

By Muhammad Mazidi, Rolin McKinlay, and Danny Causey

© 2008 Pearson Education, Inc.

Pearson Prentice Hall
Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms

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What is a Microprocessor?
 Microprocessor is a computer Central Processing Unit (CPU) on a
single chip.
‒ It contains millions of transistors connected by wires.

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Electrical Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC)
 Designed for the U.S. Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory
 Built out of
‒ 17,468 vacuum tubes
‒ 7,200 crystal diodes
‒ 1,500 relays
‒ 70,000 resistors
‒ 10,000 capacitors
 Consumed 150 kW of power
 Took up 72 m2
 Weighted 27 tons
 Suffered a failure on average every 6 hours
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The First Transistor was Created in 1947
 Used germanium
 Created by a team lead by
William Shockley at Bell Labs
 Shockley later shared the Noble
prize in physics
 Shockley semiconductors was
founded in Palo Alto in 1955
 In 1957 Bob Noyce, Gordon
Moore, and 6 others
(“Traitorous Eight”) leave to
found Fairchild semiconductor

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The First Integrated Circuit was Created in 1959
 Proposed independently by Bob Noyce at Fairchild and Jack Kilby at
Texas Instruments
 In 1968 Noyce and Moore leave Fairchild to found Intel
 Contained a single transistor and supporting components

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Intel Created the First Commercial Microprocessor
 Introduced the 4004 in 1971, contained 2,300 transistors
 Had roughly the same processing power as ENIAC

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IBM Introduced its Original PC in 1981
 Used the Intel 8088 processor containing 29,000 transistors
 Used operating system (MS-DOS) designed by Microsoft

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Microprocessor Evolution
4004 transistors were 10 μm across
Pentium-4 transistors are 0.13 μm across
MIPS-64 transistors are 28 nm across

Smaller transistors allow

‒More transistors per chip
‒More processing per clock cycle
‒Faster clock rates
‒Smaller/cheaper chips
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Microprocessor Evolution
 Moore’s Law: "The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will
approximately double every 24 months.“ (1965)

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Microprocessor Evolution
 Moore’s Law: "The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will
approximately double every 24 months.“ (1965)

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Microprocessor Evolution

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms

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Digital VLSI Systems
 The electronics industry has achieved a phenomenal growth over the
last few decades, mainly due to the rapid advances in large scale
integration technologies and system design applications.

 With the advent of very large scale integration (VLSI) designs, the
number of applications of integrated circuits (ICs) in high
performance computing, controls, telecommunications, image and
video processing, and consumer electronics has been rising at a very
fast pace.

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Digital VLSI Systems
 Information technology (IT) focuses on state of the art technologies
pertaining to digital information and communication.
‒ The IT sector is the fastest growing industry in recent times.

 One of the most important characteristics of IT is its increasing need

for very high processing power and bandwidth in order to handle
real-time applications.
‒ This has led to the need for faster and increasingly more efficient
products to enable better telecommunications.

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Digital VLSI Systems
 Manufacturing VLSI systems on chips is an involved process and
comprises a number of activities:
‒ VLSI systems design using electronic design automation (EDA)
tools
‒ Computer aided design (CAD) in the manufacture of VLSI chips
‒ Foundry activity starting from base wafer to packaged and tested
ICs
‒ Design, development, and manufacture of capital equipments for
producing VLSI chips.

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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 With the advent of discrete semiconductor devices such as bipolar
transistors, unijunction transistors, field effect transistors, etc.,
miniaturization started in full-swing, replacing bulky systems that
used vacuum tubes.

 Gradually, attempts were made to integrate several circuits, be it

analog or digital, in a single package.
‒ These attempts succeeded in producing both analog and digital
ICs, as well as mixed signal ICs.
‒ Analog ICs offered operational amplifiers, multipliers,
modulators/demodulators, etc., while digital ICs integrated AND,
OR, XOR gates and so on.
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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 Digital ICs are broadly classified according to their circuit
complexity measured in terms of the number of logic gates
or transistors in a single package.

 Chips falling under the category of small scale integration

(SSI) contain up to 10 independent gates in a single package.
‒The inputs and outputs of these gates are connected
directly to the pins in the package with provision for
connections to a power supply.

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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 With the advances in integration technology, more devices
having a complexity of approximately 10 to 100 gates were
packed in a single package.

‒They were called medium scale integration (MSI) devices.

• Decoders, adders, multiplexers, de-multiplexers, encoders,

comparators are examples of MSIs.

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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 Thereafter, large scale integration (LSI) devices emerged, which
integrated between 100 and 1000 gates in a single package.

‒ Examples of this category include digital systems such as

processors, memory chips, and programmable logic devices.

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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 Finally in late 1970s, very large scale integration (VLSI) devices
containing thousands of gates within a single package became a
reality.

‒ Personal computer chips such as 80186, 80286 of Intel are

examples of this category.

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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 Since then, integration has been growing crossing 10 million gates in a
single package.

‒ These devices fall under the categories of ultra large scale

integration (ULSI), system level integration (SLI), and system-on-
chip (SOC).

‒ FPGAs fall under all the above high-end categories starting from
VLSI.

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Evolution of VLSI Systems
 The foregoing classifications are summarized in the following table:

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Applications of VLSI Systems
 VLSI system applications have become all pervasive in various walks of
life like communications including internet, image and video
processing, digital signal processing, instrumentation, power,
automation, automobiles, avionics, robotics, health and environment,
agriculture, defense, games, etc.

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Applications of VLSI Systems
 Some of the ever-growing applications are as follows:
‒ Digital cameras
‒ Digital TV and digital cable TV
‒ Mobile phone
‒ PDA
‒ Anti-lock brakes
‒ Automatic transmission
‒ Cruise control
‒ Global positioning system for automobiles
‒ MRI/CT scan
‒ Automated baggage clearance system in airports

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Applications of VLSI Systems
 Some of the ever-growing applications are as follows:
‒ Avionic systems
‒ Flight simulator
‒ Driverless shuttle
‒ Cruise controls
‒ Traffic controller
‒ Petrol/diesel dispenser
‒ Demodulator for satellite communication
‒ Encryption/decryption
‒ Network switches/routers
‒ Quadrature amplitude modulator (QAM) and demodulator

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Applications of VLSI Systems
 VLSI systems can be designed using any of the following: 8/16/32/64
bit general- purpose processors, microcontrollers, DSPs, FPGAs, or
ASICs depending upon the applications, throughput, market potential,
etc.

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms

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Digital Design Platforms
 Till the 1970s, electronic system designs were based on discrete
analogue components such as transistors, operational amplifiers,
resistors, capacitors and inductors.

‒ These circuits offered concurrent processing but had problems of

parameter drift with temperature and ageing.

‒ The coming of TTL-based components laid the foundation of

digital design.

‒ The Intel 4004 microprocessor became the first digital platform

which was configurable using software.

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Digital Design Platforms
 The following table lists the major contemporary digital designs along
with their relative merit.

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Embedded Systems
 General-purpose processors as well as microcontrollers are popular in
embedded systems due to several good features such as low cost,
good performance, etc.

 If hardware is already available, the designer needs to concentrate

only on software development and integration of the system.

 Therefore, for small quantity of end products, it will be cost-effective

as well as reduce the development cycle time dramatically.

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Embedded Systems
 The designer may write some part of the programs in C and other
parts in assembly language and link them together.

 Designers must try to achieve the goal of designing complete systems

by treating hardware and software in a unified way.

 Processor based embedded systems are quite effective for small and
medium-end applications.

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Embedded Systems
 For medium to high-end embedded systems design, field
programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application specific integrated
circuits (ASICs) are the right choice.

‒ The development tools that will convert ideas into reality of a

working system for this category are Verilog/VHDL (hardware
design language) compilers, simulation, synthesis and place and
route tools and programmers.

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms
o Microprocessor-based Design
o Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
o Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
o Design Using FPGA

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Microprocessor-based Design
 The microprocessor has changed digital design methodology like no
other digital component.
‒ The microprocessor brought the concept of instruction set
architecture (ISA), assembler and compiler.

 There are many real-time applications, with fast update rates require
programming the microprocessor in its native assembly language.
‒ This is usually done when the size of available memory is a
constraint.

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Microprocessor-based Design
 Digital control systems use a processor by using interrupts for real-
time processing.
‒ Each interrupt will occur based on the update time requirement of
the given task.

 Because most single core general purpose processors (GPP) are

single-threaded (can process one instruction at a time), the processor
use can become very high when managing multiple interrupts from
different tasks.

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Processor Based Systems
 Designers have wide choice of selecting processors, which include
general- purpose processors, microcontrollers, application specific
instruction processors (ASIP), digital signal processors (DSP), etc.

 ASIPs are optimized for specific class of applications such as

telecommunications, digital signal processing, embedded controls,
etc.

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Processor Based Systems
 Each of these processors has an instruction set with a specific class of
applications in mind.

‒ Nevertheless, they are all processors executing instructions

sequentially, differing only in performance, processing speed,
effectiveness, power, cost, etc.

‒ Most of these processors fall under the category of VLSI.

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Processor Based Systems
 Over the years, a wide variety of systems have been designed with
these processors. These cover an impressive spectrum:
‒ data processing systems,
‒ data acquisition systems,
‒ programmable logic controllers and numerous industrial control
systems,
‒ measuring instruments,
‒ image processing systems, etc.

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. Overview of Digital Systems
4. VLSI Technology
5. Digital Design Platforms
o Microprocessor-based Design
o Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
o Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
o Design Using FPGA

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Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
 The microcontroller represents the next generation of controllers for
embedded systems.

 It allows creating systems with fewer numbers of components by

incorporating peripherals that were earlier externally interfaced with
the general purpose processor.

 Like the microprocessor, tasks in a microcontroller design

environment are divided as per the update rates required.

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Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
 Block diagram of a typical single-chip microcontroller

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Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
 For tasks requiring low update rates, coding is accomplished using a
software programming language such as C.

 Tasks that need to have high deterministic update rates are coded
using the native assembly language for a particular microcontroller.

 The other constraint with a microcontroller-based system is the fixed

number of available peripherals.
‒ Though microcontroller vendors offer a wide range of devices with different
numbers and types of peripherals, it is not always possible to find one that
matches the application requirements perfectly.

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms
o Microprocessor-based Design
o Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
o Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
o Design Using FPGA

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Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
 In computers, an ASSP (Application-Specific Standard Product) is a semiconductor
device integrated circuit (IC) product that is dedicated to a specific application
market and sold to more than one user (and thus, "standard").

 The ASSP is marketed to multiple customers just as a general-purpose product is,

but to a smaller number of customers since it is for a specific application.

 Like an ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit), the ASSP is for a special

application, but it is sold to any number of companies. (An ASIC is designed and
built to order for a specific company).

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Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
 For example, two ICs that might or might not be considered ASICs are a controller
chip for a PC and a chip for a modem.

‒ Both of these examples are specific to an application (which is typical of an

ASIC) but are sold to many different system vendors (which is typical of
standard parts).

‒ ASICs such as these are sometimes called Application-Specific Standard

Products (ASSPs).

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Presentation Progress

1. Introduction
2. Background and History
3. VLSI Technology
4. Digital Design Platforms
o Microprocessor-based Design
o Single-chip Computer/Microcontroller-based Design
o Application Specific Standard Products (ASSPs)
o Digital System Design Using FPGA

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What is an FPGA?
 An FPGA may be viewed as ‘sea-of-gates’ which can be quickly
configured to the desired application right on-the-field.

 It may also be re-configured at any point of time to another

application, provided the external hardware interface circuitry
doesn’t need any change to suit the new application.

 Some FPGAs such as Virtex series FPGAs of Xilinx permit even partial
reconfiguration, thereby eminently suited for real-time applications
needing reconfiguration on-the-fly.

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What is an FPGA?
 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are semiconductor devices
that are based around a matrix of configurable logic blocks (CLBs)
connected via programmable interconnects.

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What is an FPGA?
 FPGA chip densities range from a few thousand gates (costing under
$5 each piece) to over 10 million gates, accommodating right from
small designs to very large designs.

 FPGAs come with different flavors in terms of gate counts, speed

grades, input/output pins, packages, operating voltages, etc.

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What is an ASIC?
 Application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) are microchips developed and produced to
satisfy a specific application requirement.
‒ ASICs are more compact and power efficient than FPGAs.
‒ ASICs are fixed. They can be programmable but at the software level. For example,
microcontrollers and microprocessors are essentially standardized ASICs.
‒ ASICs are economical for high-volume production.

Example: The SENtrace ASIC accurately tracks

users where GPS is unavailable. It measures just
1.7-by-1.7-by-0.5 millimeters. SENtrace was
chosen as a CES 2016 Innovation Awards
Honoree in the Embedded Technologies product
category.

http://www.pnicorp.com/products/sentrace/

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Hard-Core and Soft-Core Processors
 Hard-Core refers to a system that cannot be reconfigured and all of the components are
already fixed by the manufacturer and integrated into a development board.

 Soft-Core refers to a System On a Programmable Chip (SOPC). In an SOPC, the processor,

memories and components are created by using the available resources in a
programmable logic device and it can be customized according to a particular set of
specifications.
‒ Altera NIOS II Soft Processor
‒ Xilinx Microblaze Soft Processor

 Hard-core processors have the advantage when it comes to performance and power over
soft-core designs.

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What is an SoC FPGA?
 Processors and FPGAs are the hardworking cores of most embedded
systems.

 Integrating the high-level management functionality of processors

and the stringent, real-time operations, extreme data processing, or
interface functions of an FPGA into a single device forms an even
more powerful embedded computing platform.

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What is an SoC FPGA?
 SoC FPGA devices integrate both processor and FPGA architectures into a single device.
‒ Consequently, they provide higher integration, lower power, smaller board size, and
higher bandwidth communication between the processor and FPGA.
‒ They also include a rich set of peripherals, on-chip memory, an FPGA-style logic
array, and high speed transceivers.

https://www.altera.com/products/soc/overview.html

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What is an SoC FPGA?
 Zynq®-7000 All Programmable SoC (AP SoC) devices from Xilinx integrate the software
programmability of an ARM®-based processor with the hardware programmability of an
FPGA, enabling key analytics and hardware acceleration while integrating CPU, DSP, ASSP
(Application Specific Standard Product), and mixed signal functionality on a single device.

http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc/zynq-7000.html

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ASIC and FPGA
 ASIC designs are suitable for high-volume production.

 For R&D environment and low volume applications, FPGAs are far
cheaper and development cycle times are lower than that of ASICs.

‒ In the research and development phase and for rapid prototyping

of a new design, FPGA is the right choice.

‒ Most companies bring out their systems based on FPGAs first and
later on switch to ASICs if the market demands are high.

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ASIC and FPGA
 The hardware implementations based on FPGAs and ASICs can exploit
high pipelining and massively parallel processing;

‒ resulting in faster and cost effective designs;

‒ and thus outperforming processors, microcontrollers and DSPs, yet

remaining competitive.

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DSP and FPGA
 Digital signal processing (DSP) is used in a very wide range of
applications from high-definition TV, mobile telephony, digital audio,
multimedia, digital cameras, radar, sonar detectors, biomedical
imaging, global positioning, digital radio, speech recognition,…

 The instruction sets of GPPs are not well suited for fast processing of
computationally intensive real time processing applications.

 Developing both programmable DSP chips and dedicated system-on-

chip (SoC) solutions for these applications, has been an active area of
research and development over the past three decades.

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DSP and FPGA
 The field-programmable gate array (FPGA) has been proposed as a
hardware technology for DSP systems as they offer the capability to
develop the most suitable circuit architecture for the computational,
memory and power requirements of the application in a similar way
to SoC systems.

 As technology has evolved, FPGAs have now become a

heterogeneous platform involving multiple hardware and software
components and interconnection fabrics.

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DSP and FPGA
 FIR Filter Implementation

Conventional DSP Processor – FPGA – Fully parallel

Serial Implementation implementation

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Digital System Design Using FPGA
 Contemporary FPGAs offer

‒ Reconfigurability: Field programmable devices can be reconfigured at any

time.
• Designers can integrate modifications or do complete personality changes.

‒ Software-defined design: The hardware is defined by software-like languages

(HDL).
• Designers can develop, simulate and test a circuit fully before “running” it
on a field programmable device.

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Digital System Design Using FPGA
 Contemporary FPGAs offer

‒ Parallelism: Circuits defined in an FPGA can be designed in a completely

parallel fashion.

• This is similar to using multi-path analogue circuits.

• A user can instantiate multiple hardware implementations on the same

chip without cross-module interference or computation loading.

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Digital System Design Using FPGA
‒ Parallelism: Multi-tasking scheme using a GPP versus a FPGA

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Digital System Design Using FPGA
 Contemporary FPGAs offer

‒ High speed: Because an FPGA is a hardware implementation running with fast

clock rates, designers can achieve very high speeds.
• Coupled with parallelism, FPGA implementation can outperform
processor-based systems.

‒ Reliability: Designers can expect true hardware reliability from FPGAs because
there is no operating system or driver layer that can affect system uptime.

‒ IP protection and re-use: Once compiled and downloaded to a FPGA,

hardware implementation is difficult to reverse engineer.
• A tested hardware design can be re-used multiple times by instantiating.

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Digital System Design Using FPGA
 The availability of high-density, low-cost FPGA devices has given
digital designers lots of flexibility to design custom digital
architectures using FPGA and HDLs.

 FPGA devices have evolved from their glue logic predecessor to a

device that now contains a large variety of built-in digital components
(memory, multipliers, transceivers and many more).

 FPGA device density has risen over the years and at the same time its
cost has made it economically viable for use in several applications.

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Dr. Mohamad Mroué
Digital System Design Using FPGA
 FPGA-based systems are gaining acceptance because these systems
integrate digital logic design, processors and communication interface
on a single chip.

 The front end design flow of a FPGA is very similar to that of a custom
logic design.

 Almost all FPGA vendors offer a suite of software tools that allows a
designer to simulate, synthesize, place and route and program the
FPGA.

Microprocessor I – 4th year Electrical Engineering – Chapter 1 74

Dr. Mohamad Mroué