Home > Technology > FPGA-Based System Design Challenges
FPGA-Based System Design Challenges
FPGA's transition from glue logic to the main processing unit in most systems is well documented. However, as this has evolved, certain tools have not kept pace. Most PCB design tools were designed to handle ASIC/ASSP and glue logic boards. As such, the process of integrating FPGAs onto the PCB has become unnecessarily complex, time consuming, and error prone. Also, PCB tools do not understand FPGA rules while FPGA tools do not understand PCB system level connectivity. As such, ensuring system level and FPGA correctness is a huge challenge. In addition, the task of assigning thousands of pins manually is error prone and complicated - design changes from FPGA through PCB design phases changes pin assignments, affecting both the FPGA and the PCBs. These changes are not communicated well across design teams, and often cause PCB respins. As the existing PCB tools do not really provide the best solution to this problem, most designers use their own methodologies; different groups use different methods to FPGA-based system design - Scripting, and other tools such as Excel, Visio are commonly used. This becomes a problem when the design is transferred between groups or individuals, increasing design time and effort.
