With the explosion ofembedded devices in thepast few decades, manyimprovements have beenmade in both the hardwarecomponents and softwaretools. Despite this innovationand growth, however,traditional embedded-systemdesign approacheshave evolved little if at alland are increasingly provingto be a hurdle. Giventhe increasingly rapidgrowth of new standardsand protocols as well asincreasing pressure ondesign teams to deliverto market more quickly,embedded-system designis due for a disruptiveparadigm change.

With the acceleratinggrowth of advances inhardware technologiesand software tools, thechallenge posed by integrationis set to rise. Thischallenge, if unaddressed,will result in more expensiveend products and canprevent experimentation,growth, and delivery of more innovative designs tothe marketplace.

Standard embeddedarchitecture

In the general computingmarketplace, standardizationhas resulted in morerobust operating systems,more refined end applications,and advances inthe underlying hardwarecomponents. The lessonlearned is that time savedin avoiding the integrationeffort of custom hardwarearchitectures and associatedsoftware componentsresults in better end solutions,which are deliveredto market faster.

For the embeddedspace, a correspondingstandard architectureneeds to be flexibleenough to adapt to diverseuse cases while providingan avenue for updates.Given these constraints,the most robust architecturefor standardizationin the embedded designspace is a microprocessor and an FPGA workingalongside each other asa single unit (Figure A ).Together, these two elementsenable substantialflexibility in designs.



Figure A In this standard hardware architecture, the combination of a processor and an FPGA enables flexibility while making it possible for standardization that can utilize higher-level tools to make substantial gains in the design workflow. The processor makes it possible to reuse existing code libraries, while the FPGA allows for the flexible implementation of custom algorithms.

FPGAs offer the benefitsof hardware determinismand reliability withoutthe up-front cost andrigidity of ASIC design.Additionally, the ability toload new logic and redefinethe connections inthe FPGA fabric makes itpossible for designers tofuture-proof designs andbenefit from more robustupdates without requiringany substantial modificationsto hardware.

The combination ofprocessors and FPGAsin embedded-system designis growing in manyindustries. Embedded-systemsdevelopers areusing designs based onseveral processors andFPGAs. The FPGAs areused to take accurate,high-speed measurementsor run time-criticalalgorithms. Meanwhile,the processors run a real-timeoperating system tohandle lower-frequencycontrol loops or provideEthernet communicationto other distributed nodesand facilitate remote dataaccess, system management,and diagnostics.

Higher-level tools

A key benefit of a standardarchitecture is that morecapable and optimizedhigh-level tools can bedeveloped and used fordesign. Higher-level toolsmake it possible for domain experts to be moreclosely involved in embedded-system design withsmaller and more efficientdesign teams. As a result,more complex productscan be pushed to marketsooner with smaller designteams.

General-purpose computingprovides evidencefor the efficiencies thatcan be gained in applicationdevelopmentwith higher-level designtools and languages.Unsurprisingly, the embeddedmarketplace hasstarted to witness thegrowth of higher-level designtools, including theXilinx AutoESL C-to-Gateshigh-level synthesis tool,Mentor Graphics CatapultC Synthesis tool, and NILabVIEW ultimate system-designsoftware.

Author’sbiography

Sanjay Challa is a productmanager for embedded softwareat National Instruments,with a focus on realtimeoperating systems andFPGA-based embedded systems.He joined the companyin 2010. Challa receivedhis bachelor’s degree in biomedicalengineering from theGeorgia Institute of Technology(Atlanta).

Acknowledgment

A version of this article originally appearedon EDN sister site Embedded.com.



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