FPGAs and DSP (11/96)

Design alternatives for DSP solutions As a designer of Digital Signal Processing systems, you have a large number of choices to implement your solution. Each solution has its strengths and weaknesses. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce Xilinx Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology and help you understand how FPGAs can be used for DSP system implementation. In the following sections, you will find a comparison of the implementation of a simple DSP function in both Programmable DSP (pDSP) and Gate Array technology. A brief explanation of Gate array technology is followed by a description of Xilinx FPGA technology. If you are already familiar with Gate array technology, you might want to skip to the last section which highlights Xilinx FPGA features.