Modular VLIW processor based on FPGA

This paper describes research result about enabling the VLIW processor model for real-time processing applications by exploiting FPGA technology. Our goals are to keep the flexibility of processors in order to shorten the development cycle, and to use the powerful FPGA resources in order to increase real-time performance. We present a modular VLIW VHDL processor model with a variable instruction set and a customizable architecture which allow exploiting intrinsic parallelism of a target application using advanced compiler technology and implementing it in an optimal manner on FPGA. Some common algorithms of image processing were tested and validated on an FPGA Virtex-6 based board using the proposed development cycle. Our approach applies some criteria for co-design tools: flexibility, modularity, performance, and reusability.