Tutorial 2: “Challenges of FPGA-based prototyping & debugging”

Abstract

Software has come to dominate system-on-chip (SoC) development. It is increasingly common for the software effort to be on the critical path of the project schedule. Only FPGA-based prototyping provides both the speed and accuracy necessary to develop and validate complex software integration prior to silicon. The exciting benefits of an FPGA-based prototype are: • Quick fine tuning of hardware/software integration and software validation pre-silicon • In-system device validation with real-time interfaces and in end application • Extended register transfer level (RTL) testing and debugging