Multiprocessor systems based on combinations of FPGAs and DSPs can be optimised with a design flow to address the creation, debug, verification and implementation of complex applications running multiprocessor systems.

The design flow combines multiprocessor software from 3L with C-to-FPGA design tools from Impulse Accelerated Technologies.

The target is the multiprocessor systems from signal processing specialist Lyrtech.

Sundance is another DSP/FPGA board developer which has worked closely with Impulse Accelerated Technologies and 3L on co-processor acceleration using the 3L Diamond tool.

Blocks of code

At the heart of the Diamond tool suite is a multiprocessor model, developed by Edinburgh-based 3L. It is claimed to simplify the development of applications which will run efficiently on embedded multiprocessor systems, such as FPGAs or DSPs.

3L Diamond is intended to help the designer create tasks that are self-contained blocks of code which communicate with other tasks on DSP, FPGA or microprocessor fabrics. The low-latency inter-processor communications and synchronisation between the tasks are automatically created by the tool.

According to Peter Robertson, 3L’s managing director: "With 3L Diamond we have not shoe-horned or re-engineered a single processor solution for the multiprocessor paradigm. Since its inception, 3L Diamond has been expressly created for multiprocessor development and this is being recognised through end-system performance and increasing customer adoption."

Martin Turgeon, product manager at the advanced development platforms division at Lyrtech, said: "We selected 3L Diamond because its ease-of-use, technical performance and industry proven multiprocessor model was a perfect complement to our multiprocessing systems.

"With the additional benefit of the C-to-FPGA design tools from Impulse we can drive further productivity and performance benefits into the design flow."

The combined design tool provides a level of design abstraction useful for implementing multiprocessor DSP/FPGA systems. The Impulse C-to-FPGA design tools, called CoDeveloper, allow
C-language applications to be efficiently re-targeted at FPGA devices.

This enables application developers to make use of the inherent parallel processing features of FPGA technology and accelerate signal processing applications.

When this capability is put together with 3L Diamond, the shared level of abstraction can mask platform level details and offer designer independence from the hardware. Design flexibility comes from the fact that the application structure is independent of the processors on which the tasks are placed. As a result a designer has greater freedom to explore the design space by simply dragging and dropping different tasks.

Common language

At the Intel Developer Forum in August, Impulse demonstrated use of the C-to-FPGA tool in programming a platform combining an Intel processor with FPGA co-processors.

The tools allow programmers to debug and partition applications between different processing elements.

David Pellerin, Impulse chief technology officer and co-founder, said: "The Impulse CoDeveloper tools allow software programmers to use the same programming language and tools for FPGA accelerators as they use for general-purpose processors."

"This approach allows accelerated multi-processor applications to be developed and deployed in hours or days, rather than weeks or months."

The joint 3L-Impulse design flow is targeted in the first instance at Lyrtech’s SignalMaster Quad (SMQ) range of DSP-FPGA high performance computing platforms.

The SMQ features a combination of FPGA and DSP devices around two clusters of one Virtex 4 LX FPGA and two TMS320C6416 DSPs.

Each cluster can yield up to 16,000MIPS/MMACS of DSP processing power and 48GMACS of FPGA-based DSP processing power. It features Dual LYRIO+ very-high-speed expansion sites, 128Mbyte external SDRAM per DSP and FPGA, and six 8Gbit/s RapidCHANNEL onboard links.

"Application designers can create co-processor modules and processor peripherals from their system level code and this is particularly important in the multiprocessor segment of the high-performance computing market," said Pellerin.

Another benefit of the Diamond tool for multiprocessor DSP/FPGA design is its ease of integration with Texas Instruments’ Code Composer Studio and Xilinx ISE tools. Diamond supports these design tools with a multiprocessor model and allows tasks to be moved between processing targets at any stage of the design flow.