Embedded Systems Design with Platform FPGAs: Principles and Practices 1st Edition

This text is Xilinx specific and the way the chapters are laid out makes a lot of sense. The first part, on white pages, covers concepts and basic elements of the topic at hand. The second half of the chapter, on grey pages, go into the concepts from an application standpoint and illustrate real world applications with charts, coding, illustrations as well as considerable text dedicated to better illustrating the fundamentals of each chapter. There are step by step instructions so that the reader can duplicate the demonstrated ideas. It is bound with university quality materials and laid out in such a manner as to make it a great teaching aid as well as a great reference source.The following publishing information is not available on Amazon so it is added as a courtesy:Audience:Embedded Software, Hardware and Systems Engineers, Designers, Developers and Architects, Field Application Engineers, Digital Designers, Upper-level Undergraduate and Graduate Students in Electrical & Computer EngineeringTable of Contents:Chapter 1: Introduction1.1 Embedded Systems1.2 Design Challenges1.3 Platform FPGAs1.A Spectrometer Example1.B Introducing the Platform FPGA Tool ChainChapter 2: The Target2.1 CMOS Transistor2.2 Programmable Logic Devices2.3 Field-Programmable Gate Array2.4 Hardware Description Languages2.5 From HDL to Configuration Bit stream2.A Xilinx Virtex 52.B Xilinx Integrated Software Environment2.C Creating and Generating Custom IPChapter 3: System Design3.1 Principles of System Design3.2 Control Flow Graph3.3 Hardware Design3.4 Software Design3.A Platform FPGA Architecture Design3.B Embedded GNU/Linux SystemChapter 4: Partitioning4.1 Overview of Partitioning Problem4.2 Analytical Solution to Partitioning4.3 Communication4.4 Practical Issues4.A Profiling with GprofA.1 Simple Profiling4.B Linux KernelChapter 5: Spatial Design5.1 Principles of Parallelism5.2 Identifying Parallelism5.3 Spatial Parallelism with Platform FPGAs5.A Useful VHDL Topics for Spatial Design5.B Debugging Platform FPGA DesignsChapter 6: Managing Bandwidth6.1 Balancing Bandwidth6.2 Platform FPGA Bandwidth Techniques6.3 Scalable Designs6.A On-Chip Memory Access6.B Off-Chip Memory AccessChapter 7: Outside World7.1 Point-to-Point Communication7.2 Inter-Networking Communication7.A High-Speed Serial Communication7.B Low-Speed Communication

When I was in school for electrical engineering, my selected option was computer architecture. One of the main concentrations included programmable logic devices or PLD's back then in the 80's. We had a crude DOS based program called CUPL that took logical statements that had been reduced, did some further reduction on them, and then created a logical burn pattern. It automatically selected a chip size and configuration from a series of existing burn once chips. Then printed out a crude ascii art diagram of the chip selected. The goal then was more keeping the logic simple and small enough to fit on an economical chip. The logic was designed in advance, and it did not change without a redesign of the system to fix or change the function.For those of you that don't get the idea on how these chips work, the real design is simple, but the variations and kinds of storage are flexible. Since everything in the digital world breaks down to one or zero, on or off, there or not, up or down, 12V, or ZVR, etc. etc., you have only to represent the underlying logic of your system in this manner. Simple logic like AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, etc. can be represented by a simple combination of a few transistors where if the inputs match the logic the current flows. Inside the chip there are mechanisms where inputs in a large, or even massive array of these transistors can be changed to represent logic. In burn once chips, this meant a series of fuses are burned (blown) internally so that what's left to conduct the current is only the inputs and outputs that represent the logic. Once burned that can't change.However, other methods imprinting the logic pattern were not so final, some could temporarily remove the inputs, and UV light would restore them. Programmable chips with windows allowed imprinting with logic, then erasure to reprogram. Programmers and engineers would use these more expensive chips as prototypes, and then burn once chips would be used when the design was debugged. Other methods have evolved electrical erasable or E^2 ROM's have been developed. Certain more reusable versions for non volatile memory (NVM) are used to allow minimal field reprogammability of parameters, which can then change program function.Platform FPGA's or field programmable chips allow more flexible changes or reprogramming in the field. In today's technology, the use of ladder logic and modeling and other representative program creation devices, has allowed people without mastery of a computer language. This to create specific programs that work for a targeted embedded environment. This allows features and reconfiguration of software controlled hardware, to make many amazing changes for field prototypes or even production changes. This book understands the basics of the computer and the control, and the data models, and that despite the evolution, starting with the basics the new can be extended, even predicted. Only a huge paradigm shift would change that, so we can safely make assumptions on the future growth.The design of this book makes it suitable for a good textbook, or a good engineers read, to understand some of the developmental changes in the world of embedded programming. It is not a good handbook or reference guide for specifics, but could be used to understand concepts for someone new to the field. It would augment the designers knowledge, and provide ideas on new ways to go. It's written for techies of one kind or another, so if you're he casual non-technology reader, go elsewhere, this is not for you. If your a high level programmer, there's a lot of good information in there to describe what's going on a few abstracted levels below what you write. The embedded programmer can use this to add to his knowledge in the field, and perhaps extend it in a new direction.

I rented this for a Kindle Paperwhite and, while the text is ok, all the equations are unreadable. Zooming does nothing to help this either.I also tried loading up the book on my computer using the cloud reader, most equations are then readable, but many are still formatted in a way that you can hardly make them out even on the computer.

Il testo è un ottima guida per chi voglia impiegare gli FPGA per implementare piattaforme complete, usando l'FPGA come cuore del sistema.Il libro si concentra sugli FPGA Xilinx Virtex (ma le nozioni, sia pratiche che teoriche, presentate si applicano ovviamente anche ad altri serie Xilinx e non solo) e parla di tutti i concetti fondamentali per l'implementazione di una piattaforma impiegando IP cores sintetizzati o fisici e aggiungendo le periferiche necessarie, e si concentra inoltre su quello che serve per implementare una toolchain di sviluppo e un ambiente d'uso basati su gcc e Linux.Pur presentando, all'inizio, una introduzione sugli FPGA, NON è un libro sugli FPGA ne tantomeno su VHDL o Verilog, bensì un testo avanzato che tratta un argomento specifico.