DSP Design Flows For Microsemi FPGAs

Digital signal processing (DSP) occurs in communications, audio, multimedia devices, imaging and medical equipment, smart antennas, automotive electronics, MP3 players, radar and sonar, and barcode readers. This algorithm can be implemented in Microsemi® system-on-chip (SoC) Products Group flash based field programmable gate array (FPGA), mixed signals FPGA, and also radiation-tolerant FPGA. This application note describes the generic DSP design flow in FPGA and the advantage of using Microsemi FPGA. The following sections are covered in this application note: • Overview of DSP Solutions – DSP platforms – Parallel Computing vs. Turing Machine – Practical considerations — Choosing between microprocessors and FPGA — Choosing between ASIC and FPGA — Choosing between FPGA vendors • Development flows – Typical DSP development flow – FPGA design flow – Intellectual property (IP) – MATLAB interface — Algorithm design — Conversion to Fixed Point — RTL design generation — Physical design implementation – DSP-centric FPGA design flow – Design flow for Mixed Signal FPGAs — Nonvolatile on-chip storage — Handling multiple channels of data stream — Context management for adaptive coefficients – Types of core generated Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Overview of DSP Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Development Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Types of Core Generated . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 More Development Flows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16