An SoC design methodology using FPGAs and embedded microprocessors

In System on Chip (SoC) design, growing design complexity has forced designers to start designs at higher abstraction levels. This paper proposes an SoC design methodology that makes full use of FPGA capabilities. Design modules in different abstraction levels are all combined and run together in an FPGA prototyping system that fully emulates the target SoC. The higher abstraction level design modules run on microprocessors embedded in the FPGAs, while lower-level synthesizable RTL design modules are directly mapped onto FPGA reconfigurable cells. We made a hardware wrapper that gets the embedded microprocessors to interface with the fully synthesized modules through IBM CoreConnect buses. Using this methodology, we developed an image processor SoC with cryptographic functions, and we verified the design by running real firmware and application programs. For the designs that are too large to be fit into an FPGA, dynamic reconfiguration method is used.