Testing and redesigning the

Currently it is envisioned that, for numerous industrial applications, a paradigm shift occurs from Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) towards reconfigurable hardware designs. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) constitute means for the implementation of reconfig-urable processors and lately are integrated with General Purpose Processor (GPP) cores. Designing for such FPGA devices requires specific skills and methodologies, and is often supported by development kits. As seen from the Academic perspective, the existing development kits for FPGA devices suffer from two disadvantages, namely very high cost and insufficient flexibility , both making them unusable for educational and research purposes. The Delft Altera-based Multimedia Platform (DAMP) project is meant to produce a low-cost and flexible development board. DAMP's main target is to provide hardware and software support for the hardware/software co-design paradigm for multimedia applications. The Altera ARM-based Excalibur device with 100k or 400k gates around an ARM922T CPU is chosen as the main chip. This selection is due to the popularity of the ARM processor in a variety of embedded devices, some of them targeting the requirements on multimedia applications, e.g., 3G mobile phones and PDAs. In this thesis the testing methodology of the DAMP design is discussed. The results and the modifications that were made in order to obtain a functional prototype, are also presented. The outcome of the testing experiments was used to redesign the DAMP schematic design and the DAMP Printed Circuit Board (PCB) design. Furthermore, a number reference designs were developed in order to support future DAMP development. Abstract C urrently it is envisioned that, for numerous industrial applications, a paradigm shift occurs from Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) towards reconfigurable hardware designs. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) constitute means for the implementation of reconfigurable processors and lately are integrated with General Purpose Processor (GPP) cores. Designing for such FPGA devices requires specific skills and methodologies, and is often supported by development kits. As seen from the Academic perspective, the existing development kits for FPGA devices suffer from two disadvantages, namely very high cost and insufficient flexibility, both making them unusable for educational and research purposes. The Delft Altera-based Multimedia Platform (DAMP) project is meant to produce a low-cost and flexible development board. DAMP's main target is to provide hardware and software support for the hardware/software co-design paradigm for multimedia applications. The Altera ARM-based Excalibur device with 100k or 400k gates around an ARM922T CPU is chosen as …