Flexible VLIW processor based on FPGA for real-time image processing

Modern FPGA chips, with their larger memory capacity and reconfigurability potential, are opening new frontiers in rapid prototyping of embedded systems. With the advent of high density FPGAs it is now possible to implement a high performance Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) processor core in an FPGA. With VLIW architecture, the processor effectiveness depends on the ability of compilers to provide sufficient Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) from program code. This paper describes research result about enabling the VLIW processor model for real-time processing applications by exploiting FPGA technology. Our goals are to keep the flexibility of processors in order to shorten the development cycle, and to use the powerful FPGA resources in order to increase real-time performance. We present a flexible VLIW VHDL processor model with a variable instruction set and a customizable architecture which allow exploiting intrinsic parallelism of a target application using advanced compiler technology and implementing it in an optimal manner on FPGA. Some common algorithms of image processing were tested and validated on an FPGA Virtex-6 based board using the proposed development cycle. Our approach applies some criteria for co-design tools: flexibility, modularity, performance, and reusability.