Accelerating FPGA-Based SoC Prototyping

FPGA-based prototyping offers advantages such as high-speed operation, real-world environment testing, and parallel execution that cannot be matched by software simulations alone. It enables developers to validate their designs and initiate software development long before the final silicon is ready. At the same time, prototyping is not merely just an FPGA board, and many factors need to be considered when it comes to rapid and effective implementation. Accelerating FPGA prototyping requires a combination of advanced hardware capabilities, improved design methodologies, efficient debugging tools, and reliable software automation. By leveraging these approaches, engineers can significantly reduce prototyping time while maintaining accuracy and performance.

The Challenges of Prototyping for SoC Development

One of the major hurdles in SoC prototyping is ensuring a realistic testing environment that accurately simulates real-world chip behavior. Additionally, challenges such as managing partitioning for large-scale designs and achieving stable communication between high-speed and low-speed devices add to the complexity. Without the right tools and strategies, development teams face significant delays and increased risk during the prototyping phase, which can impact their ability to meet project deadlines and deliver quality products to the market.

Innovative Approaches to Overcoming Prototyping Hurdles

To address these challenges, several innovative approaches have emerged. Flexible interfaces, such as configurable daughter boards, enable rapid connection to external devices and mimic real-world conditions, allowing developers to validate designs in realistic environments. Speed adapter solutions ensure seamless communication between devices operating at different speeds, which is critical for high-speed interfaces like PCIe or advanced memory standards like LPDDR4/5. Co-simulation tools and reference designs streamline the debugging process by facilitating efficient data exchange and providing pre-validated solutions, reducing the need for custom development. Furthermore, optimized design partitioning and FPGA interconnecting topology play a vital role in managing the complexities of large-scale SoC designs, allowing for iterative mapping of components while maximizing system scalability.

S2C’s Prodigy Prototyping Solutions

S2C’s Prodigy Prototyping Solutions address key challenges in FPGA-based SoC prototyping through flexible hardware, reliable software tools, and streamlined processes.

Flexible Daughter Boards for Seamless Integration

S2C’s Prodigy platform features a vast library of daughter boards supporting applications ranging from communications and SoC to storage and multimedia, including various gigabit Ethernet interfaces, QSFP28/QSFPDD, PCIe, USB, LPDDR4/DDR4, QSPI, EMMC, MIPI D-PHY and HDMI. These modular daughter boards, pre-validated to meet industry standards, simplify system setup and reduce development risks.

Speed Adapter and Memory Models to Bridge the Gap

To overcome the limitations of FPGA-based systems in handling high-speed protocols or the latest memory interfaces, S2C offers speed adapter and memory model solutions to support the device under test in the FPGA environment. This is particularly useful in validating PCIe subsystem not running at real-world speed or advanced memory controllers such as DDR5/HBM, where FPGA vendors often lack suitable PHY IPs. S2C’s PCIe speed adapter can act as a gear shift between two different PCIe speeds while memory models allow customers to validate LPDDR5/DDR5/HBM based memory controllers by bridging gaps to FPGA’s DDR4 PHYs, addressing critical bottlenecks.

High Productivity Toolchain to Streamline Large-scale SoC Designs

Software/hardware co-development with ProtoBridge™: ProtoBridge enables high-throughput data exchange between FPGA prototypes and PC hosts at speed up to 4GB/s utilizing PCIe connectivity. With ready-to-use C APIs on host PC and bridging AXI-4 master/slave IPs running in the DUT, large data such as videos, software applications or operating systems can be uploaded with ease. ProtoBridge is also a critical building block for co-simulation and other co-development applications.

Remote Runtime Management with PlayerPro – Runtime (PPro-RT): Prototyping can be remotely managed and download designs over Ethernet/USB by PPro-RT. With hardware self-tests, virtual I/O tools, and design resource access, it simplifies multi-system management, ensuring effective hardware validation and streamlined firmware testing.

Deep trace and multi-FPGA debugging with PlayerPro – DebugTime (PPro-DT): PPro-DT allows users to pre-select the signals to be observed before compilation and define the trigger conditions to start a data capture. During runtime, the selected signals are captured and stored in an external DDR4 memory for analysis.

Multi-FPGA prototyping with Player Pro – Compile Time (PPro-CT): PPro-CT is a timing-driven partitioning software enables one-click flow from RTL to bitstream, simplifying the steps of large design partitioning with features such as system level STA, high-performance TDM assignment and incremental compilation.

The Benefits of S2C’s Solutions

By providing a near-realistic environment for software validation, S2C’s customers reduce the likelihood of costly rework after silicon fabrication, ensuring a smoother transition to final production. Development teams improve efficiency by leveraging pre-validated components and automated tools, which minimize errors and streamline the prototyping process. The tools also save engineering resources, allowing developers to focus on innovation rather than labor-intensive setup and troubleshooting tasks. Faster time-to-market is achieved as these solutions significantly reduce the time required for debugging and verification, enabling teams to meet tight deadlines.

Summary

The success of FPGA-based prototyping hinges on overcoming several key challenges. By integrating flexible interfaces, speed adapter solutions, advanced co-simulation tools, and high productivity toolchain, S2C’s Prodigy Prototyping Solutions address these challenges head-on. The S2C Prodigy platform empowers development teams to reduce risk, validate designs more efficiently, and deliver products to market faster, making it an invaluable tool in the fast-paced world of chip design.

Learn more at https://www.s2cinc.com/products/

Also Read:

Unlocking SoC Debugging Challenges: Paving the Way for Efficient Prototyping

Evolution of Prototyping in EDA

S2C Prototyping Solutions at the 2024 Design Automation Conference