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Choice of an ISA for Embedded Designs
Software investment is the biggest ticket item in any project. Hence the choice of an ISA that offers a scalable solution is an important consideration. MIPS and our SoC eco system offer distinct families of processor cores that span from 32-bit micro controllers all the way to 64-bit multi-threaded super-scalar cores from single-core to many cores, to address various segments of the embedded markets. For either a new design or a follow on or upgrade to an existing design, the choice of MIPS as the ISA offers an ideal path for protecting the software investment on a project, since one can scale the application up and down the performance scale seamlessly between a wide range of processors. The bulk of the effort in the migration to any new ISA is in the low-level initialization software. This paper illustrates the ease of migration from the ARM to MIPS architecture and highlight the areas that users need to focus on.
White Paper sponsored by MIPS
Embedded Design Verification Best Practices Short Video
Watch this short video on Embedded Design Verification Best Practices and learn how to verify embedded designs for correctness and reliability utilizing a NEW approach employing a Verification and Test OS (VTOS™).
Truth in Randomness
Most engineers will be able to get through an entire career without having to think about the mathematical realities that underlie the principles of randomness and entropy—even though many use or design applications that rely on them to ensure the security of their interactions. For the most part, engineers simply take the vendor’s specifications at face value when incorporating the cryptography hardware (and the code that supports it) into designs. Unfortunately, some recent discoveries about the more subtle and not-well-documented characteristics of random noise sources have shown that you may not be getting all the security you paid for.
White Paper sponsored by Microsemi
Customer Private Label Program
Customers have prototyped their products utilizing Microsemi FPGA & cSoCs and then quickly went to production on the same platform. This ensures design consistency and gets product to their customers on time as scheduled. Microsemi’s private label program goes a step further and provides the ability to custom mark devices with company logo’s and part numbers. Furthermore, our devices do not require an external EEPROM for boot-up configuration, thus the end product can be sold as single IC solution. This approach provides numerous levels of security including prevention of reverse engineering coupled with 128-bit encryption keys to unlock and reprogram your device for field upgradability when the need arises.
Integrated Power and System Management
In this episode of Chalk TalkHD Amelia chats with Shyam Chandra of Lattice Semiconductor about an integrated approach to system and power management that will lighten your design load, improve your overall system design, and probably lower your total cost at the same time.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Lattice
High-Reliability in FPGA Design - SEU Mitigation
Neutrons are coming for you and you'd better be prepared. Whether we like it or not, SEUs (Single Event Upsets) are becoming a bigger and bigger problem for our designs, especially for high realibility systems. If you thought SEUs couldn't mess up your next design because you aren't designing something destined for space, you need to think again. In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, I chat with Jeff Garrison of Synopsys about the how we can battle SEUs (on the ground or in the air) with the latest generation of design tools.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Synopsys
It's 2022: Do You Know What Your FPGA Is?
Does the definition of "FPGA" seem like a moving target? Over the past few years, there has been phenomenal progress in FPGA technology - going from simple glue logic to impressive programmable systems-on-chip. Today's FPGAs are some of the most powerful and flexible devices ever built. But, what will your FPGA look like ten years from now? In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, Amelia Dalton chats with Umar Mughal of Altera about the past, present, and future of this exciting technology.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Altera
FPGA Prototyping with the Kintex-7 KC705 Evaluation Kit
In this episode of Chalk Talk HD, Amelia chats with Evan Leal of Xilinx about their new Kintex-7 KC705 Evaluation Kit, all the cool stuff that’s included and how we can use it to speed up our FPGA Prototyping.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Xilinx
Embedded Signal Processing Capabilities of the LatticeECP3 sysDSP Block
To address these emerging needs, Lattice Semiconductor has continued its tradition of providing high performance DSP capabilities in its most recent low-cost, SERDES-capable LatticeECP3 FPGA family. Features such as a dual slice architecture, the ability to cascade/chain DSP slices and blocks and an enhanced instruction set establish the LatticeECP3 family as a compelling alternative for signal processing applications such as FIR filtering and FFT/iFFT implementations.
White Paper sponsored by Lattice
FPGA Design Methods for Fast Turnaround
This paper takes an in depth look at a variety of techniques to help you speed up your synthesis iterations. Whether the goal is aggressive performance or to get a working initial design or prototype on the board as quickly as possible, this paper provides information on traditional and new techniques that accelerate design and debug iterations.
White Paper sponsored by Synopsys
chalk talks
Spartan-6 FPGAs in Video Designs
In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, Amelia chats with Tom Hill and Maureen Smerdon of Xilinx about how Spartan-6 FPGAs can accelerate your next video design, and how adding embedded vision to those designs is getting easier and easier.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Xilinx
Scalable Smart Debugging With ZeBu-Server
In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, Amelia chats with Lauro Rizzatti of EVE about how EVE's ZeBu emulation technology can help you find that one last bug in even the biggest of designs.
Chalk Talk sponsored by EvE
Hierarchical Design Flows: Design Preservation & Team Design
In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, Amelia chats with David Dye of Xilinx about how Hierarchical Design methodologies and Team Design can accelerate your next FPGA design and get those team members of yours working productively together. With these tools and techniques, two million logic elements won't seem like that much after all.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Xilinx
Adding Wi-Fi to Your FPGA Design
In the first episode of our new Chalk TalkHD series, Amelia Dalton talks to Bob Potock from Altium as they add Wi-Fi to an FPGA-based embedded system.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Altium
Intel Atom™ Processor with built-in Altera Arria® FPGA
In this Chalk TalkHD Amelia talks to David Schmidt of Arrow about the new Intel Atom™ processor with an Altera Arria FPGA built right into the package.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Arrow
IP and Process Solutions for Energy-efficient PMICs
In this episode of Chalk TalkHD Amelia chats with Ravi Mahatme from ARM and King Ou from GLOBALFOUNDRIES about how IP and process solutions can help solve our power management problems.
Chalk Talk sponsored by ARM
latest papers and content
FPGA Prototyping with the Kintex-7 KC705 Evaluation Kit
In this episode of Chalk Talk HD, Amelia chats with Evan Leal of Xilinx about their new Kintex-7 KC705 Evaluation Kit, all the cool stuff that’s included and how we can use it to speed up our FPGA Prototyping.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Xilinx
It's 2022: Do You Know What Your FPGA Is?
Does the definition of "FPGA" seem like a moving target? Over the past few years, there has been phenomenal progress in FPGA technology - going from simple glue logic to impressive programmable systems-on-chip. Today's FPGAs are some of the most powerful and flexible devices ever built. But, what will your FPGA look like ten years from now? In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, Amelia Dalton chats with Umar Mughal of Altera about the past, present, and future of this exciting technology.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Altera
Is Your Memory Design Correct and Reliable?
Learn how quickly and easily you can run a comprehensive memory test and uncover design and reliability issues. In this video, a memory failure is detected only in "burst" mode, while passing all other tests. A second development board passes all the tests.
Embedded Design Verification Best Practices Short Video
Watch this short video on Embedded Design Verification Best Practices and learn how to verify embedded designs for correctness and reliability utilizing a NEW approach employing a Verification and Test OS (VTOS™).
Troubleshooting and Fast Fault Isolation with VTOS
Troubleshooting and quickly isolating faults is of tremendous value for reducing the time to redesign or repair failing boards. This process can cost a company millions of dollars each year. Supporting OMAP, Sitara, QorIQ, PowerQUICC and PowerPC, this paper describes how using an interpreter that allows the execution of a full test suite for verifying a design or an individual test for fault isolation can dramatically improve quality and reliability with Kozio’s Verification and Test OS (VTOS™). It describes how memory errors can be isolated to ECC (Error Control Coding), single-bit, row, column, and correlated to a part’s reference designator.
Sponsored by: Kozio
A Platform for Reducing Verification Time and Improving Reliability of Embedded System Hardware
In this whitepaper the author reviews how leveraging VTOS during the prototype phase can assist engineers in overcoming the challenges design complexity exerts on product development, manufacturing, and overall time-to-market. Readers will gain insight into how they can replace today’s ad-hoc board level verification approaches with an ordered methodology that enables designers to automatically validate their own hardware designs, optimize system performance, and simplify the process of integrating new hardware with new software.
White Paper sponsored by Kozio
Memory Testing 101 – Avoid the Train Wreck
Memory is fundamental to the “sanity” of an embedded system. Inadequate memory testing is posing critical challenges to designers and indirectly manifesting considerable consequences at some of the biggest names in the electronics business. Today’s embedded systems consist of multiple memory types including SDRAM, LPDDR2, DDR3, FLASH, EEPROM and more, along with multiple protocols including GPIO, PCI, SPI and I2C. This paper will review a comprehensive and flexible Verification and Test Operating System (VTOS™) solution that includes a suite of memory tests that verifies the design for correctness and production readiness.
White Paper sponsored by Kozio
Customer Private Label Program
Customers have prototyped their products utilizing Microsemi FPGA & cSoCs and then quickly went to production on the same platform. This ensures design consistency and gets product to their customers on time as scheduled. Microsemi’s private label program goes a step further and provides the ability to custom mark devices with company logo’s and part numbers. Furthermore, our devices do not require an external EEPROM for boot-up configuration, thus the end product can be sold as single IC solution. This approach provides numerous levels of security including prevention of reverse engineering coupled with 128-bit encryption keys to unlock and reprogram your device for field upgradability when the need arises.
System Management
Semiconductor devices are prone to failure even after they have been tested, packaged and shipped by the semiconductor vendor. The main factors that contribute to device failure in a system are electrically, environmentally and mechanically induced failures. Because mechanical failures are almost impossible to mitigate at the electrical or electronic design stage the following discussion focuses on electrical and environmental stresses.
Sponsored by: Microsemi
Power Supply Management in High-Availability Systems
One of the most basic (and most often overlooked) aspects of high-reliability system design is getting reliable power to all of our components. We need the right kind of power at the right places - at the right times, and in the right order. We need to handle power-up, power-down, and reset cases (among others). It can be really complicated. In this episode of Chalk TalkHD, Amelia Dalton chats with Wendy Lockhart of Microsemi about how to handle power management for high-reliability systems.
Chalk Talk sponsored by Microsemi
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System Management
Semiconductor devices are prone to failure even after they have been tested, packaged and shipped by the semiconductor vendor. The main factors that contribute to device failure in a system are electrically, environmentally and mechanically induced failures. Because mechanical failures are almost impossible to mitigate at the electrical or electronic design stage the following discussion focuses on electrical and environmental stresses.
Sponsored by: Microsemi
Reduce Total System Cost in Portable Applications Using MAX II CPLDs
Traditionally, portable system designers have used ASICs and ASSPs to implement memory interfaces, I/O expansion, power-on sequencing, discrete logic functions, display, and other functions. Cost limitations, power and cooling restrictions, and board space requirements often limit the use of PLDs in these applications. Today, however, innovations in CPLDs in power reduction, cost optimization, and small form-factor packaging allow PLDs to replace or augment ASICs, ASSPs, and discrete devices.
White Paper sponsored by Altera
Leveraging OCP for Cache Coherent Traffic Within an Embedded Multi-core Cluster
Scaling processing performance beyond the frequency and power envelope of single core systems has led to the emergence of multi-core clusters. Data access management within such processing systems becomes essential to ensure behavioral consistency. One solution to provide access consistency is the application of a memory coherence model such as MESI or MOESI within the L1 data cache hierarchy. For the MIPS Technologies MIPS32® 1004K™ Coherent Processing System (CPS), we applied Open Core Protocol (OCP) point-to-point connectivity to establish snoop-based coherence throughout the cluster. Following are principles of this communication model.
White Paper sponsored by MIPS
PDN Design and FPGA Transceiver Performance
PDN designs targeting transceiver (SERDES) FPGAs require clean voltage sources with strict voltage rail requirements. This document describes the advantages of modern switching voltage regulators in a power distribution network (PDN) design to achieve the best FPGA transceiver performance. This white paper provides guidance on voltage regulator selection for low-noise applications, and a test case that demonstrates the transceiver performance for different types of voltage regulators and voltage rail configurations.
White Paper sponsored by Altera
SmartFusion Customizable System-on-Chip: Intelligent, Innovative Integration
The whole point of an FPGA is flexibility. We could also mention integration and say instead that the whole point of an FPGA is flexibility and integration. But then there is cost savings. So the whole point of an FPGA is flexibility, integration and cost savings. Yet there is also power reduction. And then there’s security.
White Paper sponsored by Microsemi
Developing Software for Embedded Systems on FPGAs
FPGAs are becoming more common in embedded design. See how easy it is to develop embedded system software for FPGAs using the popular Nios® II soft processor. In this 5-minute video you'll learn about the software development flow for the Nios II processor and see the Nios II Embedded Evaluation Kit, Cyclone® II Edition, in action. You'll also see a graphic demo showing the high performance of the Nios II processor with hardware accelerators.
Applying the Benefits of Network on a Chip Architecture to FPGA System Design
NoC interconnect architectures provide a number of significant advantages over traditional, non-NoC interconnects, such as allowing independent layer design and optimization. Altera's Qsys system integration tool, included with the Quartus® II software, generates a flexible FPGA-optimized NoC implementation automatically, based on the requirements of the application.
White Paper sponsored by Altera
HDR-60 Overview
Watch the 5-minute HDR-60 Overview Video to: Understand the features and capabilities of the HDR-60 development kit, See the exceptional performance of the HDR-60 Video Camera Development Kit, Performing Fast Auto Exposure that quickly adjusts to changing light, Delivering greater than 120dB High Dynamic Range (HDR) Performing high quality Auto White Balance