Applications Of Field Programmable Gate Arrays In Scientific Research

Focusing on resource awareness in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) design, Applications of Field-Programmable Gate Arrays in Scientific Research covers the principle of FPGAs and their functionality. It explores a host of applications, ranging from small one-chip laboratory systems to large-scale applications in "big science." The book first de

Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have emerged as an attractive means of implementing logic circuits, providing instant manufacturing turnaround and negligible prototype costs. They hold the promise of replacing much of the VLSI market now held by mask-programmed gate arrays. FPGAs offer an affordable solution for customized VLSI, over a wide variety of applications, and have also opened up new possibilities in designing reconfigurable digital systems. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays discusses the most important aspects of FPGAs in a textbook manner. It provides the reader with a focused view of the key issues, using a consistent notation and style of presentation. It provides detailed descriptions of commercially available FPGAs and an in-depth treatment of the FPGA architecture and CAD issues that are the subjects of current research. The material presented is of interest to a variety of readers, including those who are not familiar with FPGA technology, but wish to be introduced to it, as well as those who already have an understanding of FPGAs, but who are interested in learning about the research directions that are of current interest.

This Edited Volume Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) II is a collection of reviewed and relevant research chapters, offering a comprehensive overview of recent developments in the field of Computer and Information Science. The book comprises single chapters authored by various researchers and edited by an expert active in the Computer and Information Science research area. All chapters are complete in itself but united under a common research study topic. This publication aims at providing a thorough overview of the latest research efforts by international authors on Computer and Information Science, and open new possible research paths for further novel developments.

Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technologies have increased in popularity in recent years due to their adaptability and high computing potential. Further research in this area illustrates the potential for further advancements and applications of this useful technology. Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) Technologies for High Performance Instrumentation presents experimental and theoretical research on FPGA-based design and the development of virtual scientific instrumentation that can be used by a broad segment of scientists across a variety of research fields. Focusing on crucial innovations and algorithms for signal processing, data acquisition mechanisms, FPGA-based hardware design, and parallel computing, this publication is a critical resource for researchers, development engineers, and graduate-level students.

Embedded systems applications that are either mission or safety-critical usually entail low- to mid- production volumes, require the rapid development of specific tasks, which are typically computing intensive, and are cost bounded. The adoption of re-configurable FPGAs in such application domains is constrained to the availability of suitable techniques to guarantee the dependability requirements entailed by critical applications. This book describes the challenges faced by designers when implementing a mission- or safety-critical application using re-configurable FPGAs and it details various techniques to overcome these challenges. In addition to an overview of the key concepts of re-configurable FPGAs, it provides a theoretical description of the failure modes that can cause incorrect operation of re-configurable FPGA-based electronic systems. It also outlines analysis techniques that can be used to forecast such failures and covers the theory behind solutions to mitigate fault effects. This book also reviews current technologies available for building re-configurable FPGAs, specifically SRAM-based technology and Flash-based technology. For each technology introduced, theoretical concepts presented are applied to real cases. Design techniques and tools are presented to develop critical applications using commercial, off-the-shelf devices, such as Xilinx Virtex FPGAs, and Actel ProASIC FPGAs. Alternative techniques based on radiation hardened FPGAs, such as Xilinx SIRF and Atmel ATF280 are also presented. This publication is an invaluable reference for anyone interested in understanding the technologies of re-configurable FPGAs, as well as designers developing critical applications based on these technologies.

This note is being published to improve the visibility of this subject, as we continue to see problems surface in designs, as well as to add additional information to the previously published note for design engineers. The original application note focused on designing systems with no single point failures using Actel Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for critical applications. Included in that note were the basic principles of operation of the Actel FPGA and a discussion of potential single-point failures. The note also discussed the issue of startup transients for that class of device. It is unfortunate that we continue to see some design problems using these devices. This note will focus on the startup properties of certain electronic components, in general, and current Actel FPGAs, in particular. Devices that are "power-on friendly" are currently being developed by Actel, as a variant of the new SX series of FPGAs. In the ideal world, electronic components would behave much differently than they do in the real world, The chain, of course, starts with the power supply. Ideally, the voltage will immediately rise to a stable V(sub cc) level, of course, it does not. Aside from practical design considerations, inrush current limits of certain capacitors must be observed and the power supply's output may be intentionally slew rate limited to prevent a large current spike on the system power bus. In any event, power supply rise time may range from less than I msec to 100 msec or more. Katz, Richard B. Goddard Space Flight Center

This book covers complete spectrum of the ICT infrastructure elements required to design, develop and deploy the ICT applications at large scale. Considering the focus of governments worldwide to develop smart cities with zero environmental footprint, the book is timely and enlightens the way forward to achieve the goal by addressing the technological aspects. In particular, the book provides an in depth discussion of the sensing infrastructure, communication protocols, computation frameworks, storage architectures, software frameworks, and data analytics. The book also presents the ICT application-related case studies in the domain of transportation, health care, energy, and disaster management, to name a few. The book is used as a reference for design, development, and large-scale deployment of ICT applications by practitioners, professionals, government officials, and engineering students.

This book contains the papers presented at the 14th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL) held during August 30th- September 1st 2004. The conference was hosted by the Interuniversity Micro- Electronics Center (IMEC) in Leuven, Belgium. The FPL series of conferences was founded in 1991 at Oxford University (UK), and has been held annually since: in Oxford (3 times), Vienna, Prague, Darmstadt, London, Tallinn, Glasgow, Villach, Belfast, Montpellier and Lisbon. It is the largest and oldest conference in reconfigurable computing and brings together academic researchers, industry experts, users and newcomers in an informal, welcoming atmosphere that encourages productive exchange of ideas and knowledge between the delegates. The fast and exciting advances in field programmable logic are increasing steadily with more and more application potential and need. New ground has been broken in architectures, design techniques, (partial) run-time reconfiguration and applications of field programmable devices in several different areas. Many of these recent innovations are reported in this volume. The size of the FPL conferences has grown significantly over the years. FPL in 2003 saw 216 papers submitted. The interest and support for FPL in the programmable logic community continued this year with 285 scientific papers submitted, demonstrating a 32% increase when compared to the year before. The technical program was assembled from 78 selected regular papers, 45 additional short papers and 29 posters, resulting in this volume of proceedings. The program also included three invited plenary keynote presentations from Xilinx, Gilder Technology Report and Altera, and three embedded tutorials from Xilinx, the Universit ̈ at Karlsruhe (TH) and the University of Oslo.