What Are FPGAs

and Why Should You Care

What Are FPGAs
Field-Programmable Gate Array
Can be configured to act like any circuit – More later!
Can do many things, but we focus on computation acceleration
FPGAs Come In Many Forms

PCIe-Attached In-Storage

CPU Integrated In-Network

How Is It Different From ASICs
+ FPGAs can be field-programmed
o Parallel execution
o Field-programmed
o Higher performance in terms of power consumption and
number of ports
o Function can be changed completely whenever
o FPGA fabric emulates custom circuits
Basic FPGA Architecture
“Configurable logic block (CLB)” Programmable
~
I/O block Latch
6-Input
Look-Up
Table
FF

Ex) 2-LUT for “AND”

Input 1 Input 2 Output Sequential circuit
0 0 0 construction
0 1 0
1 0 0
1 1 1
Programmable interconnect
Basic FPGA Architecture – DSP Blocks
“DSP block”
CLBs act as gates – Many needed to
implement high-level logic
Arithmetic operation provided as
efficient ALU blocks
o “Digital Signal Processing (DSP) blocks”
o Each block provides an adder + multiplier

× +/-
Basic FPGA Architecture – Block RAM
“Block RAM”
CLB can act as flip-flops
o (~1 bit/block) – tiny!
Some on-chip SRAM provided as blocks
o ~18/36 Kbit/block, MBs per chip
o Massively parallel access to data → multi-
TB/s bandwidth
Basic FPGA Architecture – Hard Cores
Some functions are provided as
Memory efficient, non-configurable “hard cores”
o Multi-core ARM cores (“Zynq” series)
o Multi-Gigabit Transceivers
o PCIe/Ethernet PHY
o Memory controllers
Ethernet
o …

ARM PCIe
DE10 – STANDARD
 FPGA Compilation Toolchain
“Which transceiver instance should
top_transceiver_01 map to?”
High-Level High-level language vendor tool And so, so much more…
HDL Code
Constraint
Functional File Cycle-level
Simulation Simulation
Language
Compiler FPGA Vendor toolchain (Few open source)

Verilog/ Map/
Synthesize Netlist Place/ Bitfile
VHDL
Route
Programming/Using an FPGA Accelerator
Bitfile is programmed to FPGA over “JTAG” interface
o Typically used over USB cable
o Supports FPGA programming, limited debugging access, etc
PCIe-attached FPGA accelerator card is typically used similarly to GPUs
o Program FPGA, execute software
o Software copies data to FPGA board, notify FPGA
-> FPGA logic performs computations
-> Software copies data back from FPGA
FPGA flexibility gives immense freedom of usage patterns
o Streaming, coherent memory, …
FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array

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 CycloneII Architecture
FPGA www.altera.com

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 CycloneII Architecture
FPGA www.altera.com

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 Cyclone II Resource
FPGA www.altera.com

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FPGA vs. ASIC

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