A real-time kernel — Rapid prototyping with VHDL and FPGAs

Abstract

In order to remain competitive a company needs to decrease the development time for their products. Consequently the time for prototyping has to be cut down as well especially to see whether the product will fulfil requirements. One way to reduce the development time is to describe the circuit with a hardware description language, to synthesize the design description automatically and to implement in FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays).

This article describes how to implement a small real-time kernel and a very simple CPU in hardware. During the development process the hardware description language VHDL (Very high speed integrated circuit Hardware Description Language) was used for the behavioural and data flow (RTL) description, the simulation of the hardware and for synthesis to gate level. Also it describes the fitting of the design into FPGAs for rapid prototyping and experiences about different phases of the development.