To understand the 'why' of this tool, we first need to know the classical approach in FPGA development.įor background information, you may need to read this: FPGA. Contentsīefore jumping into the details, let us see why you may need this tool and why you will probably find no alternative solutions. gain flexibility by adapting and extending the emulated hardware according to your needsĪmongst other things, this article describes the architecture of the framework, the implementation details, possible applications and the current limitations of this new approach.avoid dependency to specific manufacturers.reduce costs down to zero by avoiding the need of development boards / hardware prototypes, power supplies, cables, logic analyzers, oscilloscopes, sensors, actuators, expensive licenses, etc.It is exactly at this point where FPGA Hardware Simulation Framework may provide a suitable intermediate step, especially for those without much experience on the topic and short of budget. Several questions arise when starting this topic.ĭepending on the specific application, the variety of different manufacturers, FPGA families, specific functions and sizes, licences and tool support, may be quite intimidating. Still, buying a development board to play around and try things out may be a blocking obstacle even for the most enthusiastic hobby developers. On the other side, through new efforts to lower costs and support of open source, this topic has gained popularity in the last few years. On the one side, despite its recent spread into new areas, this technology continues to be quite inaccessible to the hobby developer and still serves mainly niche applications. While resuming my activities in FPGA development (after a pause of 25 years!), I soon realized that some things had changed a lot while some others remained the same. Simultaneous instantiations with different configurations or variants of the tool may even allow simulation of complex systems composed of several FPGAs, sensors and actuators. The simulation framework replaces the FPGA chip itself, as well as peripheral components and devices. This tool is, in fact, a framework that allows emulation of hardware by simulating digital signals (simulation of analog signals is not supported yet). In this article, a hardware simulation tool is presented which allows a real-time 'interactive' user experience without the need of actual hardware or expensive licenses. Simulate hardware containing an FPGA programmed in VHDL interactively!

Fpga simulation software