Reconfigurable pipelined 2-D convolvers for fast digital signal processing

In order to make software applications simpler to write and easier to maintain, a software digital signal processing library that performs essential signal and image processing functions is an important part of every DSP developer’s toolset. In general, such a library provides high-level interface and mechanisms, therefore developers only need to known how to use algorithm, not the details of how they work. Then, complex signal transformations become function calls, e.g. C-callable functions. Considering the 2-D convolver function as an example of great significance for DSPs, this work proposes to replace this software function by an emulation on a FPGA initially configured by software programming. Therefore, the exploration of the 2-D convolver’s design space will provide guidelines for the development of a library of DSP-oriented hardware configurations intended to significantly speed-up the performance of general DSP processors. Based on the specific convolver, and considering operators supported in the library as hardware accelerators, a series of trade-offs for efficiently exploiting the bandwidth between the general purpose DSP and the accelerators are proposed. In terms of implementation, this work explores the performance and architectural tradeoffs involved in the design of an FPGA-based 2D convolution coprocessor for the TMS320C40 DSP microprocessor from Texas Instruments. However, the proposed concept is not limited to a particular processor. Copyright  1999 IEEE . This paper is an extended version of a paper accepted in the IEEE VLSI Systems Transaction. The paper will be published in 1999. Personnel use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collectives works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrithed component of this work in other works, must be obtained from the IEEE. Contact: Manager, Copyrights and Permissions / IEEE service Center / 445 Hoes Lane / P.O. Box 1331 / Pistacataway, NJ 08855-1331, USA. Telephone: + Intl. 732562-3966.