FPGA: An Important Hardware Accelerator

By

 

   

Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit. The idea is that any task is computable faster by improving the hardware rather than the software.

 

FPGA (field-programmable gate array) and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) are the most known hardware accelerators. ASICs are integrated circuits made for specific use. Once manufactured in the industry, ASICs are not reconfigurable. In contrast, the customer to suit a given application can configure FPGAs. The configuration is stored in the SRAM, which has no write limit.

 

The performance offered by the FPGAs can outweigh the general-purpose central processing unit in some applications. They support several parallel computations applications and implemented in single clock execution time. Deep learning frameworks are still in their early stages making it hard to design custom hardware. This is where the ability to reconfigure the hardware comes into play to improve the AI field.

Most hardware is incapable of keeping up with converting and trans-coding real-time video. Finding one that can do the task means a high price in terms of cost and latency. FPGAs provides a cheaper alternative for video processing.

 

These integrated circuits can be programmed in two modes: master mode and slave mode. Master mode is where the FPGA reads configuration data from the external source such as the external flash memory chip. Slave mode is where an external master device such as a processor configures the FPGA. The programming involves a design abstraction that models a synchronous digital circuit in terms of the flow of digital signals between hardware registers and the logical operations on those signals. There are two prominent languages for programming the IC, VHDL and Verilog.



The top view of a Zinq7 board (MYS-XC7Z010) with Dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Processor with Xilinx 7-series FPGA logic


The rear of the board with configurable user I/O female connectors


Here at the Nakuja project, we are working on enhancing real-time video transmission from the rocket flight. We have been working with Xilinx Zinq7 boards and we intend to use them for the coming rocket design. The merits offered by the boards will help us avoid costly hardware for video processing but assure us of obtaining the better results.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

USING NEO-6M GPS MODULE AND INTERFACING IT WITH ESP32

By
Image
  This tutorial will cover NEO-6M GPS Module and how to interface it with ESP32. 1.1 The NEO-6M GPS module The NEO-6M GPS module is a type of GPS receiver that utilizes the u-blox 6 positioning engine to provide location and timing information. Many GPS-based projects, including tracking gadgets and navigation systems, frequently employ this module. It supports the GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and QZSS satellite systems and has a very sensitive receiver that can track satellites in difficult terrain. The module is a popular option for a variety of applications due to its small form size, compact form factor, low power consumption, and multiple communication interfaces. NEO-6M GPS module can track 22 satellites and identify locations anywhere in the world. Some of its specifications are: ·        GPS chipset: u-blox NEO-6M ·        GPS module frequency: L1, 1575.42 MHz ·        C/A code: 1.023 MHz chip rate ·        Channels: 50 channels, GPS L1(1575.42Mhz) ·        Track
Read more

PCB ETCHING PROCESS

By
Image
 Are you tired of having to use a bread board for your projects? Do you get tired of all the wires that you use and the hustle of remembering which wire goes to which hole on the bread board😕? Well look no further, you are in the right place😌. This is a simple guide to being able to design and fabricate your own PCB at home for either a personal project of a school project. At the Nakuja project we design our PCB's for avionics and flight control systems using design software such as EasyEDA, print the designs, etch the PCB and do our own soldering of the components onto the PCB.  This blog is designed to give you a step by step guide of the etching process. I hope you enjoy making your PCB!! Materials required Board design (after using EasyEDA, Eagle, etc. to design it) clothes iron copper clad board sand paper cupric chloride water plastic dish or basin PCB drill soldering iron solder wire NOTE: the etching solution is CORROSIVE and toxic hence should be handled with care and
Read more

Second Test Flight Report

By
Image
Avionics report As we are the brains of the rocket we have some tasks we want to achieve at the end of each launch: - Log flight data - Transmit flight data - Check for apogee - Fire parachute - Build the flight computer 1. Log flight data We were not able to equip the rocket with an SD card is it was throwing some errors just before flight. We had tested it and it worked previously. So we didn't want to take more time debugging the problem as we had a backup for that. If we could be able to transmit the data well and good. As we would be able to log the data on the ground station. Recommendations - Test the SD card and make sure it is working prior to launch - Figure out a way to write to the internal flash system of the rocket 2. Transmit flight data We were able to transmit flight data from the rocket to the ground station. We used the Lora module and we were able to send a packet back to the base station Recommendations - Beef up the base station as to not rely on Putty and bor
Read more