Chapter 17 - Bringing It All Together

Abstract

This chapter illustrates an example project to bring together many of the diverse concepts and recommendations found throughout this book. The primary design phases include requirements, architectural, implementation, and verification. The chapter discusses the important design considerations associated with each of these design stages. The first major step in the FPGA design process is the definition and refinement of system requirements. The system and functional requirements should be as detailed as possible. The design team should follow an organized process for deriving and defining system requirements. The chapter presents a list of important considerations that should be addressed during the system requirement design phase. The architectural phase can be broken into several sub-tasks, including system engineering, technology, manufacturer family, package and device decisions, tool and language decisions, and design architecture decisions. The implementation phase can be broken into several sub-tasks, including informed pins assignment, design capture, synthesis, behavioral simulation, and place and route. The verification phase can be broken down into several sub-tasks, including timing simulation, optimization, configuration, and board-level testing. After the design has been successfully verified in the final application, the design will typically move to higher volume production. As the design is being transitioned to volume production, time and effort should be dedicated to archive the design. After successful testing, verification, and validation of the design, the operational system prototype may be delivered to the end customer.