Design and implementation of a versatile display system based on FPGA for embedded systems

Abstract

A versatile display system VDS for advanced embedded systems is developed to unify and perform display operations, usually overloading the system's main processing unit in one hand and requiring more knowledge of display technologies in the other hand. In the presented approach, the developed display system should handle the well-known display functions optimally and should highly improve interactivity sought in advanced and complex embedded systems. VDS is based on SOPC architecture, where all embedded related display functions (LEDs, 7 Segments Display, Character LCD Display and VGA Display) are built into soft IP format to enhance design flexibility. The integration of VDS in 8-bit MCU based applications resulted in almost 30% reduction in main MCUs activities, which also proved to be useful when handling information display within ZigBee networks.