Systems-on-Chip on FPGAs

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of Systems-on-Chip (SoC) implemented on reconfigurable technology. SoCs are customized processing systems, typically consisting of one or more processors, memory interfaces, and I/O peripherals. FPGA vendors provide SoC design tools, which allow for rapid development of such systems by combining together different intellectual property cores into a customized hardware system, capable of executing user-provided software. Using an FPGA to implement an SoC provides software designers a fabless methodology to create and tailor hardware systems for their specific software workloads. The vendor tools support a vast range of system architectures that can span from small embedded microcontroller-like systems to multiprocessor/Network-on-Chip architectures. This chapter describes the advantages and limitations of designing SoC on reconfigurable technology, what is possible with modern FPGA vendor SoC design tools, and the main steps in creating such systems. The SoC development tools for FPGA are rapidly changing. As such, this chapter intentionally does not contain step-by-step instructions; instead, it focuses on the overarching concepts and techniques used in the latest SoC tools.