How fast is rapid FPGA-based prototyping: Lessons and challenges from the digital TV design prototyping project

Abstract

This paper presents a case study targeting the Aptix MP4 board and Xilinx VirtexE FPGAs, for digital TV application prototyping. The difficult FPGA prototyping issues typically encountered by engineers are illustrated on a big industrial example. Due to the increasing ASIC complexity, the basic challenge was to meet the project deadlines. To enable faster FPGA-based prototyping, both the ASIC design practices and the FPGA design tools should be adjusted. The study has led to a number of guidelines for design teams to make designs prototyping friendly and a number of points for the improvement of the FPGA tools. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002.