FPGA Design From Scratch It all started more than 40 years ago

Transcription

1 FPGA Design From Scratch It all started more than 40 years ago Presented at FPGA Forum in Trondheim February 2012 Sven-Åke Andersson Realtime Embedded 1

2 Agenda Moore s Law Processor, Memory and Computer Evolution My Timeline ASIC and FPGA Evolution ASIC FPGA Design Comparison Starting a Blog Writing a Blog What did I Learn Demo Summary 2

3 Introduction "The number of transistors incorporated in a chip will approximately double every 24 months." Gordon Moore, Intel Co-Founder Text On April 19, 1965 Electronics Magazine published a paper by Gordon Moore in which he made a prediction about the semiconductor industry that has become the stuff Text of legend. It has been called Moore's Law. Text On September 8, 1969 I started to study Electrical Engineering at The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. This presentation is about how Moore s Law has shaped my professional career. Text 3

4 Moore s Law TCore i7 (Quad) TPentium 4t TPentium

5 Intel 4004 Processor Evolution Motorola 6800 Motorola

6 DRAM Technology Evolution 4G / 1.35 DDR3 6

7 An Example When the Intel 1103 DRAM came out 1971 it cost $20 That gives a price/bit of 2 With the same price/bit a 4Gbit SDRAM would cost $ A 4Gbit SDRAM today cost less than $20 7

8 Computer Evolution Data PDP 11/40 MacBook Pro Evolution Ratio Processor TTL-based Intel Core i5 Clock Frequency 1 MHz 2.5 GHz 2500 Local Memory 64 KB 4GB Disk Memory 2.5 MB 500GB

9 My Timeline FPGA Blog FPGA Blog Component Testing ASIC Design SOC Design KTH LM Ericsson 1990 Ericsson Years 9

10 My Master s Thesis in 1974 One of the first microprocessor system bit CPU 740 khz, instructions/s bit address latch 4009 program and I/O converter to standard memory 1702A 256x8bits UV erasable PROM bits static RAM 10

11 Test Engineer at LM Ericsson

12 ASIC Evolution Manufacturer Name Process Line Width Gates Year Fairchild Semiconductor National Semiconductor GA TTL 5um GA CMOS 2µm Motorola H4C CMOS 0.7 µm 300k + 256kbit RAM 1990 LSI Logic G10 CMOS 0.25µm 5 Million+ 10Mbit RAM 1995 IBM Cu-08 CMOS 90nm 72 Million 2004 IBM Cu-45HP SOI 45nm 200 Million

13 The FPGA Evolution Year Milestone Company Complexity ASIC gates Comment 1985 The first FPGA Xilinx Altera s first FPGA Altera 2000 Nios processor Altera 2001 MicroBlaze processor Xilinx 2002 Stratix Altera 2007 Cyclone III Altera 2011 Zynq-7000 Xilinx 5.2 Million Dual ARM Cortex-A9 13

14 Starting a blog What to do if you have been an ASIC designer for 15 years and know nothing about FPGA? I sat down and came up with the following idea. I am going to buy a FPGA design kit and start experimenting and at the same time document everything in a blog. I will call the blog: FPGA design from scratch 14

15 ASIC/FPGA Design Comparison A lot of similarities ASIC design flow fully scriptable FPGA design uses vendor GUI based design kits ASIC design has no room for mistakes FPGA design used to be cut and try Large FPGA designs force ASIC like design flow SOC design means more software and less hardware 15

16 Prerequisites Using an FPGA development kit Learning by doing Using real hardware Make good contact with the FPGA vendor Document everything in a blog Document every step I take so I know how to do it the next time around Describe things in a way that a newbie will understand Spread the information for everyone to read Encourage interaction from readers Look for information everywhere 16

17 Blog Comments 17

18 Finding Information Vendor documentation Web forums Search engines Support pages Books Part 1 of the blog has a lot of references 18

19 Using a Virtual Machine Use Linux as the software platform Easy installation of the complete design environment Use a Windows PC or a MAC or a Linux workstation as the host machine. 19

20 Choosing a Development Board Virtex-4 MicroBlaze Development Board Xilinx Spartan-6 LX9 MicroBoard 20

21 FPGA From Scratch Blog Content Part Written Description Using Virtex-4 design kit Using Design Suite Using Spartan-6 LX9 MicroBoard 21

22 What Can You Learn From This Blog Installation of Xilinx Design Suite Using ISE, EDK, SDK, ChipScope, PlanAhead, impact Designing an embedded system around MicroBlaze Writing application programs in C Adding your own IP block Writing scripts to control the whole FPGA design flow Installing and running PetaLinux and much more 22

23 How Can This Blog Be Used Teaching tool for self studies Replacing a Xilinx training session Used by students as a complement to their labs. Designing a complete training course Helping FPGA designers to solve problems Starting point for finding information about FPGAs Used as a forum for asking questions and getting answers Finding information not found anywhere else 23

24 What did I Learn in Writing My Blog I know much more about FPGAs There are a lot of people all over the world eager to learn more about FPGAs. I have helped many FPGA designers to solve their problems. I had a lot of fun but I didn t get rich It help me to find a new job. 24

25 Summary It has been a fantastic journey and it is still not over It has never been boring I have had a chance to meet people all over the world I have been forced to learn new things You are never to old to start a new career The blog opened up new opportunities You are welcome to contact me by or phone Sven-Åke Andersson sven-ake.andersson@rte.se Mobile: