Why FPGA is the Ideal Choice in Embedded System Design?

With the continuous development of consumer electronics and the Internet of Things, user demands are becoming increasingly complex and diverse. Therefore, in embedded system design, we must choose the appropriate processor (SoC) system. Of course, we also need to consider cost, power consumption, performance, I/O resources, etc. However, as practical cases increase, FPGA is becoming the mainstream choice for embedded system design.

Xilinx, as the industry leader in programmable logic devices (FPGA), provides a rich variety of devices and simple development tools. Below, we will introduce the following aspects:

FPGA/SoC: Initially, we all used pure FPGA design, utilizing FPGA resources to implement soft-core processors such as Microblaze, Picoblaze, etc. Now, Xilinx has launched the Zynq SoC and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC series, which integrate hard-core processors (dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU or Quad-A53 + Dual-R5 GPU). This not only brings improvements in performance, power consumption, and cost-effectiveness but also reduces PCB size.

Power Consumption: The Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC series has made significant improvements over pure FPGA devices. It supports multiple power modes: Full-Power mode; Low-Power mode; Sleep mode, DRAM pause; Power-Off mode, providing a rich and flexible power management solution, allowing for flexible switching between performance and power consumption.

Analog Signal Processing: The ADC function was integrated in the Virtex series long ago, but it was limited to monitoring internal analog signals of the device, such as voltage and temperature. Later, the 7 series integrated two 1Msamples/sec @ 12-bits ADC modules, supporting the acquisition of internal and external analog signals. The Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC integrates higher-performance ADCs/DACs modules: 4Gsamples/sec @ 12 bits ADCs / 6.5Gsamples/sec @ 14 bits DACs, applicable in fields such as 15G and radar.

Security Aspects: We all know that the startup file of FPGA is in the form of bitstream. The Xilinx Zynq-7000 SoC and Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC support encrypted bitstreams, which are securely decrypted and started after being loaded into the processor.

Development Tools: For engineers, the most important thing is still the development tools. Good development tools can greatly improve efficiency. The Vivado tool, launched alongside the Xilinx Zynq 7000 series, integrates a wealth of features: IP integrator (IPI) is a graphical IP design plugin; HLS (High-Level Synthesis) supports engineers in generating HDL functional code using C/C++. Additionally, SDSoC is a complete system, software, and hardware design tool that supports the full development of embedded system hardware and software functionalities using C/C++, while SDAccel is a design tool based on the OpenCL development framework.

It can be seen that FPGA/SoC suppliers have spent considerable effort optimizing devices and improving development tools, making them easier to apply in embedded system design. At the same time, our learning process will also be easier than in the past. In the near future, FPGA/SoC will gain more widespread applications.