FPGA hardware design flow and tools overview
This section introduces the steps involved in the FPGA hardware design and provides an overview of the associated tools, along with each step.
FPGA hardware design flow
The FPGA hardware design process is similar to the ASIC hardware design process that we covered in the previous chapter. Besides the high ASIC NRE cost and its long time to market path compared to an FPGA design process, the main technical difference is that the choice of features the designer can use and combine to produce a working FPGA device is limited by what the FPGA device itself can offer. However, there is a rich list of devices and features that usually meet many demanding and challenging system requirements. Once the FPGA design specification has been finalized and the target FPGA device has been chosen, the design flow will look as follows:
Figure 2.1 – FPGA hardware design flow
Product requirements phase
This is not a...