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Public Account: ZYNQ
Author: watchman
Why Did ARM Wear the FPGA Vest, Named “Zynq”?
The term Zynq easily evokes the idea of zinc, the most common chemical element found in batteries, solar screens, alloys, and pharmaceuticals. Alloys of zinc with other metals can achieve enhanced functions, showcasing different colors based on the alloy’s specific applications. The most common use of zinc is electroplating. So, what is the connection between this name and electroplating? In April 2010, at the Embedded Systems Conference in Silicon Valley, Xilinx released the architectural details of the scalable processing platform, which is based on the ubiquitous ARM processor SoC that meets the high performance, low power consumption, and multicore processing requirements of complex embedded systems. The core essence of the Xilinx scalable processing platform chip hardware is to use the general-purpose dual ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor system as the “main system,” combined with low-power 28nm process technology to achieve high flexibility, powerful configuration capabilities, and high performance. Since the programmable logic part of this new device is based on Xilinx’s 28nm 7 series FPGA, the series name includes “7000” to maintain consistency with the 7 series FPGA, facilitating the future naming of new products in this series. Besides the chip, the Xilinx Zynq-7000 series also forms the foundation of the ultimate platform product.The software development and hardware design implementation tools provided by members of the Xilinx Alliance Program ecosystem and the ARM Connected Community, along with widely adopted operating systems, debuggers, IP, and other elements, come together like “electroplating,” making the scalable processing platform possible.
The Communication Market Shrinks, FPGA Sees New Opportunities
Once FPGA was extremely popular in the communication market, with some network packet forwarding, distribution, address replacement, and wireless protocol algorithms all implemented by FPGA; however, with the development of ASICs, network processors have become increasingly powerful, integrating a large amount of network hardware resources. Some communication manufacturers, like Huawei, have made headway in the chip field, leading to FPGA often being relegated to merely validating first-generation products in the communication market.
Now, with industrial automation moving towards smart industries and the demand for deep learning algorithms growing, as well as big data acceleration, FPGA has found a new application.
With Xilinx’s launch of the 28nm Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC, FPGA is accelerating in industrial applications, and Xilinx’s industrial-grade customer growth is rapid, far exceeding that of communication customers. How will the Xilinx Zynq devices profoundly transform industrial applications in the field of intelligent industrial automation?
Industrial automation refers to the measurement, manipulation, and processing of information and process control without direct human intervention in machines or production processes to achieve expected goals. It involves mechanical, microelectronic, and computer technologies, requiring information collection, processing, analysis, transmission, and control. Traditionally, industrial automation did not require cutting-edge semiconductor technology products; however, with the rise of smart factories and smart industrial automation, it has begun to adopt the latest technologies.
For example, motor control can achieve over 15 times speed improvement after adopting FPGA! This means efficient and precise control, aligning with the trend of energy conservation and emission reduction.
FPGA in Industrial Applications Focuses on Four Key Areas: Motor Control, Industrial Networking, Machine Vision, and Industrial Safety. In motor control, designers focus on reducing noise, minimizing vibration, lowering EMI, achieving higher precision, reducing energy consumption, and ensuring safety. The challenges they face include how to achieve differentiation, lower total system costs, cope with complex system functions, and enhance system security. The characteristics of FPGA can precisely address these challenges, with the advantages of FPGA in motor control summarized as lowering total system costs, increasing solution flexibility, extending application cycles through interface expansion, and enhancing system performance.
FPGA excels at parallel processing, making it significantly advantageous over traditional MCU+DSP solutions in areas requiring multiple motor controls.
ZYNQ: 2.5us MCU: 55us
The advantages of FPGA in industrial networking include support for cabling and real-time network protocols, integration of network and custom functions to reduce BOM costs, rich IO and logic element support for multi-protocol conversion, high integration with low latency performance, mature development boards and reference designs to shorten development time, support for long lifecycle solutions, and integration of various network security functions. Regarding long lifecycle solutions, I have personal experience; some of our customers are still using our products from ten years ago, and we continue to provide support and services for their needs.
SoC-e has implemented high-reliability seamless redundancy protocols (HSR) and parallel redundancy protocols (PRP) on the Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC, featuring high-precision timing functions applicable to smart grid fields such as power automation and substations, as well as high-speed rail and other rail transport sectors. Compared to traditional RSTP, MSTP, or proprietary ring network protection technologies, it can achieve true “zero packet loss” and “zero switch” network redundancy protection technology.
Application of Visual Recognition in Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS)
Xylon and Xilinx have just announced the launch of a new ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) development kit, enabling the development of driving assistance systems based on the fusion of video streams from multiple onboard cameras.
Have you seen Audi’s automatic parking technology demonstration, where cars can find parking spaces and park themselves without driver intervention? Have you ever used a Kinect controller to play Xbox 360 games?
If so, you may be witnessing the arrival of the Smarter vision system era. From the highest level electronic systems to ordinary apples, Smarter vision technology influences various forms of products. While today’s various systems are already astonishing, some experts predict that in the next decade, the vast majority of electronic systems, from automobiles to factory automation, medical, security, consumer, aerospace, and defense, will incorporate more advanced Smarter vision technology.
Advanced video systems not only enhance and analyze images but also trigger actions based on these analyses, significantly controlling computing function demands. The Smarter vision’s Xilinx All Programmable solutions are at the forefront of this revolution. Based on the first device to integrate ARM dual-core CortexTM-A9 MPCORETM, programmable logic, and various critical peripherals on a single chip, the ZynqTM-7000 All Programmable SoC has launched a supportive infrastructure of tools and IP that will play a vital role in realizing these visual innovations and accelerating delivery. This supportive infrastructure includes VivadoTM HLS (High-Level Synthesis), the new IP Integrator tool, OpenCV (Computer Vision) library, SmartCORETM IP, and dedicated development kits.
Why Did Zynq Choose A9?
Xilinx chose to collaborate with ARM to develop a dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore processor because ARM processors lead the industry, are widely adopted by customers, and have a mature overall ecosystem and support tools.
After 20 years of development, although the usage of processors has increased, the number of mainstream platforms has decreased. The American magazine Microprocessor Forum noted that in 1992, many processor platforms were active (Figure 2), but by 2009, only four mainstream platforms remained: ARM, x86, PPC (PowerPC), and MIPS. Among them, ARM has become a focal point due to its rich ecosystem. ARM President Tudor Brown stated that ARM has 900 partner companies worldwide, and the momentum of these partners is strong (Figure 3). He promised: “In the future, ARM will continue to invest in product roadmaps and partnerships to ensure customers have strong channels and ecosystems.”
Although ARM9 and ARM7 are the most licensed worldwide (Figure 4) and have the largest shipment volumes, the Cortex-A series is the fastest-growing series, even surpassing the M series. 
Besides Xilinx’s Zynq family, many companies are innovating based on Cortex-A9, including smartphones, tablets, 3D TVs, network SoCs (system on chips), network servers, and supercomputers.
These companies choose A9 because it is one of the higher-performing products in the ARM processor series, based on the ARMv7 architecture. The design of the A9 processor is based on an advanced speculative 8-stage pipeline, featuring efficient, dynamically sized, superscalar, and out-of-order completion characteristics, thus achieving high levels of performance, efficiency, and functionality to meet the demands of cutting-edge products in consumer, networking, enterprise, and mobile applications.
The Integration of Processor and FPGA is a Chemical Reaction: 1+1>2
Market research shows that FPGA currently accounts for 50% to 70% of all embedded system usage. Therefore, this market is vast, and the usual engineering solution is “embedded processor FPGA.” However, developers are not satisfied with this, or rather, the existing devices in current applications cannot meet their needs, whether it is traditional single processors, single FPGAs, ASICs, or ASSPs, especially for software development companies, programming FPGAs is quite challenging. We found that by 2014, about $12.7 billion of the market could not be served by traditional FPGAs.
The current four major challenges are: improving system performance, reducing system power consumption, minimizing circuit board area, and lowering overall system costs.
A Zynq device can achieve the functionality of “embedded processor + FPGA.” Especially, Zynq does not simply integrate FPGA with the processor; it is an organic combination of the two. The traditional interconnection between FPGA and processors is through PCIe, while Zynq uses the AXI4 connection bus, allowing for a wide bandwidth to form between FPGA and processors. The dual-chip solution of FPGA + CPU shows that the interconnection bandwidth using PCIe between FPGA and processors is narrow, and the PCIe channels are fewer, meaning that sometimes more than half of the FPGA is used to support bandwidth; moreover, the two devices are separately connected to external memory.
After using Zynq, the intermediate PCIe connection can be removed, and memory can be shared with FPGA, significantly reducing costs and power consumption.
ARM China’s President Wu Xiongang pointed out: “It is well known that the next generation of system processing is not just the CPU’s function; the processing capability of interfaces largely determines the entire system’s application capability. Therefore, we often see the same design, due to good integration of interfaces, that the functionality can differ by 50%. We are pleased that Xilinx’s Zynq has achieved high data throughput capabilities on the new AMBA AXI4 (Advanced eXtensible Interface 4) interface.”
Zynq has been around for a while. However, with the development of the Internet of Things and smart industries, letting ARM wear the FPGA vest will undoubtedly lead to an even more exciting performance.
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