The Power to Experiment

Using C language programming as an aid to FPGA-based hardware design gives you the power to experimentwith alternate algorithmic approaches, with alternate hardware/software partitioning, and with alternate target platforms. Using the same design entry language, you now have the ability to evaluate your applications and their constituent algorithms using different hardware and software targets.

In this book we will show you how you can, for example, set up a test in which the same C-language algorithm can, with only minor modifications, be executed in a desktop computing environment (under the control of a C debugger such as found in Visual Studio, gbd, or Eclipse) for the purpose of functional simulation, be executed in-system on an embedded processor, and be compiled directly to an FPGA as dedicated hardware. Using this approach, fundamentally different computing alternatives can be tried, and alternative hardware/software partitioning strategies can be evaluated. As you'll see, this power to quickly generate and experiment with hardware/software prototypes is the key advantage of using software-based methods and tools for FPGAs.