Making area-performance tradeoffs at the high level using the AccelFPGA compiler for FPGAs.

ABSTRACTApplications such as digital cell phones, 3G wireless receivers, and voice over IP, require DSP functions that are typically mapped onto general purpose DSP processors. With the introduction of advanced FPGA architectures which provide built-in DSP support such as the Xilinx Virtex-II, and the Altera Stratix, a new hardware alternative is available for DSP designers. DSP design has traditionally been divided into algorithm development and hardware/software implementation. The majority of DSP algorithm developers use the MATLAB language for prototyping their DSP algorithm. Hardware design teams take the specifications in MATLAB code and manually create an RTL model in VHDL or Verilog. This paper describes how area-performance tradeoffs can be performed quickly at the high-level using a behavioral synthesis tool called AccelFPGA which reads in high-level descriptions of DSP applications written in MATLAB, and automatically generates synthesizable RTL models in VHDL or Verilog. Experimental results are reported with the AccelFPGA compiler on a set of 8 MATLAB benchmarks that are mapped onto the Xilinx Virtex II and Altera Stratix FPGAs.