Frank Hoschar, v-p sales & support at design tool firm Altium Europe, talks to Electronics Weekly about designing the FPGA as a system-on-chip device and the impact of cloud computing.
What trends are influencing embedded system design today?
Hoschar: I see the emergence of low-cost, high-capacity FPGA devices and their use as a system platform. From an EDA tool perspective this has a number of implications. Firstly, processor functionality is moving into the FPGA along with much of the rest of the system. This means the design tools must be able to provide the same mechanisms for developing and debugging soft systems as are used for discrete processor designs.
Secondly, as system functionality is increasingly moving into the programmable hardware domain, it’s now possible for embedded programmers to design and influence the hardware that their software runs on. So design tools must provide practical, easy to use C-to-hardware compilation that supports this. Thirdly, programmable devices allow for setup and test of a complete system without the need to wait for final hardware.
What tools do embedded designers need to exploit the capabilities of FPGA-based design?
Hoschar: Tool vendors should enable the embedded designers of today to make use of FPGAs without the need to become FPGA design specialists. All designers, including embedded software and hardware developers, should be able to fully exploit the freedom that designing within a completely soft domain brings. Once designers free themselves from the constraints of hard wiring functionality into the system, completely new options emerge.
In your vision, what are the barriers to design innovation?
Hoschar: Innovation doesn’t just happen. Designers need time to play with ideas and to follow various paths to see where they lead. The way we have traditionally done design is at odds with this.
Typically the start of any embedded design involves deciding on and locking down the hardware on which the system will be built. This is like putting the cart before the horse as once this is done, making substantial changes to hard functionality is almost impossible. As designs become more complex, making the right hardware decisions right at the start of the project is becoming more difficult, and the process takes time away from the real design challenge.
What can companies do to weather the current recession?
Hoschar: We’re naturally concerned about how the economic downturn will affect the prospects of the electronics industry in the coming months. However, we don’t really anticipate a picture of doom and gloom. The opportunity offered by the downturn is to take the available time and move on to a new, unified electronic product development methodology – to be prepared once the next boom arrives!
What special challenges do you see for Europe?
Hoschar: Finding new ways of cutting power consumption will stay at the top of the agenda. The demand for smart, connected systems which can communicate with each other via the Internet will grow as cloud computing gains more traction.
While this represents a tremendous business opportunity, it is also a great challenge in view of the falling number of electronics engineers in Europe. To overcome those issues we need to continue raising the level of abstraction and allow engineers to use existing skills like component based system design instead of having to dive deep into VHDL, IP-cores and ways to integrate all those bits and pieces.
See also: Q5 - Interviews with electronics industry leaders
Read all the Electronics Weekly Q5 interviews. From ARM's chairman, Sir Robin Saxby, to touchscreen technology firm Zytronic's MD, Mark Cambridge, the business leaders share their particular insights on the UK electronics industry.