FPGA implementation of Blokus Duo player using hardware/software co-design

Abstract

Blokus Duo is an abstract strategy game for two players. In this paper, we describe our FPGA implementation of Blokus Duo player for ICFPT2014 design contest, which is the revised version of the previous design for ICPFT2013 design contest. Our design consists of hardware logic part and software part using soft IP processor. The hardware logic part calculates evaluation value of the board status which is a heavy task for the software part. Our implementation uses recursive Alpha-Beta pruning and iteration deepening algorithm by the software part, which are complex to implement as the hardware logic circuit. The current version of our implementation on Xilinx Artix7 can run at 142MHz. The hardware logic part evaluates about 90,000 nodes in one second at the beginning of the game.