controlpaths.com

Streaming data to DDR memory from PL on Arty board.

In the last article, we talked about using the AXI Datamover IP, which allows us to perform DDR memory transactions in a way very similar to how we would with an SoC and AXI DMA. The article used the YPCB-00388-1P1 board to transfer data from PCIe to DDR memory. This setup introduces two differe...

Published by P.Trujillo on Jun 15, 2025

Streaming data to DDR memory from PL. HW design.

We are living in a kind of data fever. Today, certain types of data are even more valuable than gold. And just like gold, data must be transported from its origin to the place where it will be used. We can extrapolate this to computing, where data is collected in bytes and must then be processed,...

Published by P.Trujillo on Jun 1, 2025

Getting started with the Ebay's Kintex7 Accelerator

To be honest, this week I had prepared another article about the carrier recovery algorithm. However, I received a board I bought some weeks ago on EBAY, and I was eager to try it out. The board is a PCIe FPGA accelerator based on the AMD Kintex7 XC7K480. It features almost half a million logic c...

Published by P.Trujillo on May 18, 2025

Writing Verilog code with Copilot

I have to admit that I started using AI tools like Copilot and ChatGPT a few months ago. Initially, I was resistant to the idea. However, after testing them on some projects, I was surprised, and now I frequently use them to generate auxiliary scripts. To be honest, I usually ask the AI to genera...

Published by P.Trujillo on May 4, 2025

Do you need an FPGA?

In my professional career, I have often been asked the question: what is an FPGA? FPGAs are not as well-known as devices like microcontrollers, which is why they are not widely used. However, this presents a great opportunity for FPGA developers. Although FPGAs are not commonly used in industry o...

Published by P.Trujillo on Apr 13, 2025

SHA256 compute in Verilog

On my last visit to the Embedded World, one of the most popular topics was Cyber Resilience Act and Cybersecurity, and FPGA had much to say in this area. They are fast, they can execute algorithms in parallel, and they are in the lower level of an ethernet interface checking all the packets, … su...

Published by P.Trujillo on Mar 30, 2025

My visit to the Embedded World Conference

Last week I was in Nuremberg assisting at the Embedded World Conference. This is not my first time there, I was there also in 2023 but this year was special, it was my first year as a speaker, talking about real-time simulations on FPGA, but I am going to talk about that later. Before I went, I w...

Published by P.Trujillo on Mar 16, 2025

Application notes

[AN001] Designing from zero an IIR filter in Verilog using biquad structure and bilinear discretization.

Filtering is likely the most common DSP algorithm that any embedded engineer has to design, no matter it they are developing for an STM32, or TI DSP or, of course, en FPGA. Filtering is such important because the majority of the applications are connected to the real world, so they need to captur...

[AN002] Running subcycle average models on Speedgoat Performance System.

Materials like Silicon Carbide (SiC) or Gallium Nitride (GaN) are making our power electronics converters faster and faster. This means small inductors and capacitors that make, in most cases, the cost of the devices decrease. This also means that the control devices also have to be faster, and n...