FPGA vs DSP's in practical/commercial applications...

[odesus]

Dear comunity:

We know FPGA is a growing market for commercial applications in perspective. DSP, specifically the excellent TI devices have made practical (with Code composer and Da Vinci platforms) designing systems for Digital processing with Human-machine interfaces (with OMAP processors), which are wide spread at industry.

With versatility of FPGA and huge possibilities of implant different architecture resources like pipeline, polycores,AI, etc; the question is:

Is it recommendable to be an FPGA developer or a DSP ( I mean with DSP devices) developer?

For example XILINX has restriction of ISE software licences, but JTAG resource with Xilinx cables are relatively cheap. ALTERA is excellent but chips are expensive overall for STRATIX II series, Quartus II is excellent also. In addition to this, TI has software licence cost restrictions and a HUGE PROBLEM!! Jtag resource for RTDX is SO EXPENSIVE!!!, specifically XDS510 and XDS560 but TI is the most used tool (almost like a standart) at industry and sometimes uses a FPGA of altera as a linker betweed board and Code Composer.

Consider this question in function of practicity, future of technology, obsolecense and commercial purposes. Many thanks to all.

Regards.

Odesus.

 

[echo47]

In my opinion, FPGAs flew past DSPs about six years ago. For many applications, FPGAs are enormously faster, cheaper, and more flexible. When the Virtex-II appeared, I said "bye-bye forever!" to my DSPs days.

DSPs are still useful in cost-sensitive applications that do a relatively small amount of signal processing. DSPs are also useful to companies who don't want to re-educate their software engineers into digital engineers.

What ISE license restriction? The ISE WebPACK software is free, however it supports only the smaller Xilinx devices. If you want to use the big FPGAs, you'll need the full version ISE Foundation.

For only $150 US you can buy Xilinx's nice Spartan-3E Starter Kit which includes a development board, software, manuals, and cables. Many other kits are available from various companies.

 

[melc]

There are DSPs on the market running at 750Mhz, 1Ghz (4x250Mhz) and 2.4Ghz (4x600Mhz). The next gen of DSP will have usually 2 or 4 cores inside and will work at 4x1...2.5Ghz


Fastest FPGA with DSP ALU's inside can work right now at 400Mhz (some clocks inside at 550MHz, rarely 1Ghz). DSPs will use FPGA as commpanion IC, but an FPGA will never replace a faster DSP.

 

[echo47]

That's why I stopped using DSP chips! I can buy FPGAs containing *hundreds* of low-power 500 MHz DSP blocks, plus the ability to interconnect them with arbitrary logic.

 

[gliss]

It depends on the design and the goals. Small projects don't use large FPGAs because the cost is too high. Larger projects with larger budgets and digital designers may use FPGAs because they are more flexible than standard digital signal processors.

 

[odesus]

Dear friends:

Yes, there's in both way advantages of use of FPGA respect to DSP. I share the idea of echo about put different blocks of DSP inside and work with these blocks like pipeline architecture, like modern processors as intel.

Nonetheless, Have some of you seen an FPGA in a cell phone or another system in commercial applications?

One of principal problem is speed. Is it relatively easy to implement 2 or more block for a pipeline architecture in a FPGA? Time for developing and marketing is a very important issue.

If we suppouse, install 2 cores inside of FPGA could we get a better performance like DSP of highest speed like TMS320C6416T (I GHz)?.

What do you think?. Many thanks.

 

[echo47]

A cell phone is a cost-sensitive application that needs a relatively small amount of signal processing. Even the cheapest FPGA may be too expensive. As I mentioned earlier, a low-cost DSP is sometimes the better choice.

Years ago, I designed signal processing systems with the equivalent of fifty 1GHZ DSPs in one FPGA. By using a big modern FPGA, that ratio would increase to over 200. The FPGA is rather expensive, but it's enormously cheaper than a board filled with DSPs.

Also, a TMS320C6416 burns roughly 1 to 2 watts. An FPGA DSP block is a tiny fraction of that.

It's not easy to design FPGA parallel/distributed processing systems like that, but the benefits are great.

 

[odesus]

Firstable Thanks to all for your valuable comments

Dear Mr. Echo: Could you suggest us a book for this kind of design? I mean system with multicore or with parallel pipeline architecture in VHDL?

Many thanks.

 

[Hero]

Hi,

Don't forget power consumption. It is very important for mobile wireless devices. DSP solutions are powerfull but less flexible and power inefficient for same technology.

 

[melc]

About power drawn. A Stratix FPGA (leader in DSP computation) from Altera
it drawns like a 2.4Ghz DSP. So guys, why FPGA instead of DSPs ?

 

[echo47]

The signal processing performance of a Stratix FPGA (or Xilinx equivalent) is far far beyond a 2.4GHz DSP chip. See the intro paragraphs:
https://www.altera.com/products/devices/stratix/features/stx-measuring_perf.html
https://www.altera.com/products/devices/stratix2/features/dsp/st2-dsp_block.html

 

[odesus]

Dear Comunity:

Let me tell you something about cost. Just check at www.digikey.com prices of FPGA, for example spartan 3 of 1000k and compare this with prices at www.em.avnet.com.

FPGA are even cheaper than a TMS320C6416 (just 1 IC):

XC3S1000-4FGG456C $63.79
XC3S1000-4FGG676C $87.91

TMS320C6416TGLZ1 (1GHz) $392.083

I think with FPGA like an affordable solution of 1000K we can implement many DSP blocks which work in a pipeline architecture. Even avnet has an excellent board of virtex 5 family very powerfull with an affordable price.

Regards!!

 

[hnreda]

Dear comunity:

We know FPGA is a growing market for commercial applications in perspective. DSP, specifically the excellent TI devices have made practical (with Code composer and Da Vinci platforms) designing systems for Digital processing with Human-machine interfaces (with OMAP processors), which are wide spread at industry.

With versatility of FPGA and huge possibilities of implant different architecture resources like pipeline, polycores,AI, etc; the question is:

Is it recommendable to be an FPGA developer or a DSP ( I mean with DSP devices) developer?

For example XILINX has restriction of ISE software licences, but JTAG resource with Xilinx cables are relatively cheap. @ltera is excellent but chips are expensive overall for STRATIX II series, qu(at)rtus II is excellent also. In addition to this, TI has software licence cost restrictions and a HUGE PROBLEM!! Jtag resource for RTDX is SO EXPENSIVE!!!, specifically XDS510 and XDS560 but TI is the most used tool (almost like a standart) at industry and sometimes uses a FPGA of @ltera as a linker betweed board and Code Composer.

Consider this question in function of practicity, future of technology, obsolecense and commercial purposes. Many thanks to all.

Regards.

Odesus.

pls read a book about FPGA's DSp application

 

[echo47]

That's a useful book, but please don't upload files here that are freely available on the internet. The title is "DSP: Designing for Optimal Results - High-Performance DSP Using Virtex-4 FPGAs", published by Xilinx, and is available here:
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/books/dsp/

Several more nice Xilinx publications here:
**broken link removed**

Here are comments from another FPGA designer regarding DSP-vs-FPGA. My estimates are about 50% of his estimates, but the ratios are still dramatic.
**broken link removed**

For medium-small DSP applications, the Spartan-3E is faster and about half the price of Spartan-3. Too bad Xilinx doesn't make really big Spartan-3E devices. The most impressive Xilinx FPGA right now is the big Virtex-4 SX55 containing lots of logic fabric and 512 DSP blocks running at 400 MHz (the slowest speed grade). Not cheap of course - $1170 US quantity one - but that's peanuts compared to other solutions.