HARDWARE/SOFTWARE MODELING OF FPGA-BASED SYSTEMS

This paper discusses methods and tools for the modeling of FPGA-based systems for different kinds of practical applications, such as computational and peripheral devices, embedded controllers, etc. The system to be modeled is presented in the form of a traditional composition of an execution unit (a datapath) and a control part. They are implemented partially in reconfigurable hardware (in FPGA) and partially in software running on PC. The interaction between hardware/software components is organized through a defined software/hardware interface. For the majority of the applications considered, the control unit has been implemented entirely in FPGA. This allows the speed of execution of the respective algorithms to be increased and systems to be constructed with distributed control. Although the execution unit is emulated mainly in software, it can be partially implemented in hardware and the boundary between hardware/software components is considered to be fuzzy. The software components have been designed with the aid of object-oriented libraries and programs written in Visual C++. The models considered have been used for experiments with FPGAs and for educational purposes.