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Abstract:
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In recent years, embedded systems have emerged at a faster rate and used in every
field. They are range from household products such as microwaves, to automotive
products such as air bags sensing and control, to industrial robots which employ
distributed processing and coordination as well as getting an integrated part of
military solutions. The design of embedded systems is now becoming increasingly
difficult due to the tight constraints on area usage, size, power consumption and
performance. In addition to these constraints, many embedded system developers are
faced with tight time-to-market deadlines. The product should be deployed when the
demand for the product still exists, if the demand ceases then the product would not
yield any profit for the company.
To develop these products, various tools and technologies have been used:
microcontroller, DSP processor, ASIC, and now FPGA. FPGA is one of the most
efficient methods. Informally, an FPGA can be thought of as a “blank slate” on which
any digital circuit can be configured in the field – that is, after the device has been
manufactured, installed in a product, or, in some cases, even after the product has
been shipped to the consumer. This makes the FPGA device fundamentally different
from other Integrated Circuit (IC) devices. In short, an FPGA provides programmable
“hardware” to the embedded systems developer. The use of FPGAs (Field
Programmable Gate Arrays) and configurable processors is becoming increasingly
important. FPGA offer a great deal to the embedded systems designer. FPGAs not
only meet the complex and demanding requirements of embedded systems that are
becoming so universal today but also offer a low-risk, quick time-to-market solution
that designers can easily modify when they need to make changes, fix bugs or create
product derivatives at some point in the future.
Here in our project we have tried to implement such powerful FPGAs in the design of
football match application. The aim of the project is to develop a 5-player soccer
system on multiple Xilinx FPGA boards using embedded processors. Besides making
us similar with FPGA technology, the project also makes us understand real-time
concepts like scheduling, handling shared resources and priority management and
some another typical embedded system requirements. |