FPGA Devices

Abstract

FPGA devices have grown in density from a few thousand gates in the 1980s to approximately 10 million gates in 2004. There are proven advantages in choosing a FPGA-based implementation of digital logic over a fixed custom implementation of digital logic. The advantages include cost economies when a product is produced in low volume, in-system re-programmability and a shorter design cycle from concept to silicon. Most of the contemporary FPGAs from various vendors have common on-chip resources. The purpose of this chapter is to talk about various on-chip resources or primitive devices of FPGAs and their use in synthesising digital systems. These device hardware primitives are comparable to assembly language constructs of a general purpose processor, invoked by the compiler. Though one may rarely use programming at the primitive device level using HDLs, it is good to know the underlying hardware, used by the synthesis tool for realising digital logic17. The idea is to try and understand how these hardware resources can be used to implement a single-chip robot controller module that can support motor control algorithms, processor and interfacing needs.