System-Level Design Tools Can Provide Low Cost Solutions in FPGAs: TRUE or FALSE?

Abstract

Due to fundamental dynamics in the semiconductor industry, FPGAs vendors are increasingly focusing on cost and EDA vendors are focusing on system-level design. This is good news for the end user because both time-to-market and device unit cost are top of their priority lists whilst performance and density now often take a back seat – these problems having been solved. However, are these two initiatives of cost reduction and better system-level design tools correctly aligned for FPGAs? This talk will explore some of the areas where they are aligned, and some areas where they are not. The analysis uses real system examples to illustrate the successes to date, as well as the challenges looking forward as more and more engineers develop low cost solutions using FPGAs.