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Figure 1 – DSP Co-Processing Design Kit hardware platform
DSP Co-Processing Design Kit
The DSP Co-Processing Design Kit features
a Virtex-II Pro evaluation board,
shown in Figure 1. This board contains a
Xilinx XC2VP7-FF896 FPGA, eight SMA
connectors for high-speed I/O, on-board
DDR SDRAM (64 MB), up to 30 LVDS
pairs, user I/O switches/LEDs, and several
expansion connectors.
Two of the expansion connectors are
compatible with the TI adaptor daughtercard
(shown in Figure 2) and can connect
to TI DSPs. Example designs show how to
interface directly with the TI processor
using the Xilinx EDK toolset and a direct
memory interface approach.
A co-processing-oriented application
can use the hardware platform, demonstration
designs, and included tools as a great
starting point for prototype design and
algorithm development. DSP applications
are often very difficult to simulate in software,
so the ability to quickly create a hardware/firmware/software
platform can cut
development time significantly. Using the
co-simulation tools available in the Xilinx
tool suite through The MathWorks
Simulink and the target hardware is one
technique that can dramatically reduce
design time.
Additionally, deciding what portions of
the algorithm to process in the DSP and
which portion to process in the FPGA can
often best be done with a trial-and-error
approach, using real hardware to quickly
evaluate the performance of various
options. For example, the number of data
streams that can be pre-processed by an
FPGA before post-processing by a DSP will
depend on many factors – the “burstiness”
of the incoming data, the “accept”
response rate of the DSP, the size of the
buffer memories, the bandwidth of the system
bus, and the amount of pre-processing
allocated to the FPGA. These are all difficult
decisions to make without doing
some detailed hardware prototype-based
analysis.
Figure 2 – DSP processor adaptor module
DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING
The DSP Co-Processing Design Kit also
includes the following software tools, as
evaluation versions, from the Xilinx
XtremeDSP Software Evaluation CD
Kit: Xilinx ISE 6.2 Foundation,
ChipScope Pro, Xilinx System Generator
for ISE 6.2, The MathWorks MATLAB,
and Simulink.
Video DSP Design Kit
The Video DSP Design Kit targets simple
DSP-oriented video applications in the
industrial security, consumer, and automotive
markets. Algorithms for video processing
like image recognition, video encode,
video decode, and video image enhancement
are all very difficult to prototype and
evaluate without actual hardware on which
to run the software or firmware. Using a
DSP Design Kit, with some simple video
capabilities, can make it much easier and
quicker to prototype and evaluate various
algorithms and architecture alternatives.
The Video DSP Design Kit features a
Xilinx Spartan-3 XC3S400-FG456 or
XC3S1500-FG456 FPGA, Platform Flash
configuration PROM, expansion connectors,
32-bit PCI edge connector, 10/100
Ethernet port, video DAC, RS-232 console,
PS2 keyboard and mouse ports, simple
analog I/O, 1 MB SRAM, 256 Kb
serial EEPROM, and a variety of user
switches and LEDs.
Winter 2004 Xcell Journal 49