Phrasing!

I'm not enough of an FPGA guy to make really deep comments, but this looks like the state of C compilers about 20 or so years ago. When I started coding in C one had to write the code with an eye to the assembly that the thing was spitting out. Now, if you've got a good optimizer (and the gnu C optimizer is better than I am on all but a very few of the processors I've worked with recently), you just express your intent and the compiler makes it happen most efficiently.

Clearly, that's not yet the case, at least for that particular synthesis tool. It's a pity.

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com 

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

'tis true, ?tis pity, And pity ?tis ?tis true

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Rick C

Of course sometimes you don't want optimisation. Consider, for example, bridging terms in an asynchronous circuit.

I know! I often feel like I'm a software guy, but stuck in the 80s, poring over every line generated by the assembler to make sure it's optimized.

OK. I give up -- what do you mean by "bridging terms"?

In general, I would say that if this is an issue, then (as with the 'volatile' and 'mutable' keywords in C++), there should be a way in the language to express your intent to the synthesizer -- either a way to say "don't optimize this section", or a way to say "keep this signal no matter what", or a syntax that lets you lay down literal hardware, etc.

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com 

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

Bridging terms refers to terms that cover transitions in an asynchronous sequential circuit. Xilinx tools specifically do not honor this sort of logic and it really has no business in their FPGA's. However, if you insist on generating asynchronous sequential logic in a Xilinx FPGA, you will need to instantiate LUTs to get the coverage you're looking for.

--
Gabor

But, but "HLS", and "IP Integrator"... ;)

I actually came back a bit let down from a recent Xilinx user's meeting at just how much focus Xilinx is putting on their 'high level' tools. I'm of the opinion that Xilinx is sinking a ton of resources into something that a small minority will ever use. (And will probably not last long either). To Xilinx, RTL design is dead...

--Mark

If that small minority is the one with the most dollars behind it, then they win. Dunno if that's the case or not, but it seems like there's a lot of design of high-volume, cost-sensitive stuff that's done mostly by applications engineers these days.

Or, Xilinx is wrong, and they'll spend a lot of money on uselessness. That's never happened before in the history of semiconductors, now has it? ;)

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com 

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

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I wish they would just focus all their effort on the synthesizer and placer . The chips get better and better, but the software seems stuck. I think the high-level tools are not for serious users. You can only use them if y ou don't care about clock speed, and if you don't care about clock speed, y ou should be using a processor or something.

Maybe if the synthesizer got better the demand for hugely fast chips would go down, and thus they'd shoot themselves in the foot -- at least from their perspective.

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com 

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

Agreement. Add value where you add value - in your core competencies. Xilinx adds value here - they design some kick ass technologies, in some very tough geometries. They add value here. They have some excellant experts in a wide breadth of technologies, than can help you design and debug some of the most advanced designs. They add value in their software back end tools which must map to this technology. They have great reference designs, and documentation.

They don't add value in the front end. They're trying to solve a difficult problem that's been around for 20 years, that's vexxed an entire EDA software industry. Learn from the ASIC guys here. ASIC companies punted on their "special sauce" in-house SW 20 years ago, before they got wise and let the EDA industry do its job. FPGA needs to do the same now.

I'm actually of the opinion that they should punt on synthesis too. Focus on the back end. I doubt it'll happen - folks are too used to the idea of "free" EDA tools from the FPGA vendors.

Regards,

Mark

It is called a bridging term since it is a logically redundant term that straddles two required minterms. Its purpose is to remove static hazards (glitches) that can occur when inputs change, typically when there are unequal propagation delays inside the implementation.

It only occurs in asynchronous circuits; the workaround is to only have synchronous designs and implementations.

Agreed. You will probably also have to nail down the LUTs and the signal routing.

I suspect that, since Xilinx has a very good range of I/O primitives, there really isn't any benefit to full async design in their FPGAs.

Synthesis is easy. Place and route is hard. A big question is how to either decouple or integrate the them.

Particularly when you see the size of the big Xilinx chips and consider the relative time taken to get across the chip and through a single LUT (and then through the integrated ARM cores :) )

But I suspect I'm close to teaching you how to suck eggs :)

Nah -- about the teaching me to suck eggs part, at least. I understand the principles involved, but it's not something I've ever done.

Assuming that people know what the hell they're doing it can't be an easy problem, because it hasn't been fully solved. At least -- to my knowledge the process is still an iterative one that's at least partially based on some sort of a pseudo-random process (presumably simulated annealing).

--

Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
http://www.wescottdesign.com 

I'm looking for work -- see my website!

Xilinx parts do not require bridging terms. If two canonical terms, adjacent in the Karnaugh map, are set to the same value in the LUT there is no glitch if a single input transitions from one term to another. This is because they use transmission gates for the multiplexer and there is enough capacitance to hold a signal on the output if neither signals are driving the output as the switches transition.

If you think about it just a bit, you will realize most FPGA LUTs only have canonical product terms and so can't have "cover terms" or "bridging terms".

--

Rick C

I'm sure heuristics are involved, of course, but even they will only get you so far.

From memory, a CLB "gate" delay is of the order of 100ps and it can take ~1ns for a logic signal to cross the chip (clocks can be a bit faster due to dedicated drivers and tracks). Even a "global reset" becomes a heretical concept.

Now, what delay should you guess a particular gate+track will have, and where should you place it? Ditto the

100,000 others - to maximise the clock rate of the ensemble.

As you might guess, the workflow is

1 design 2 synthesise (from RTL/behavioural/system design) 3 simulate, to get an idea of speed 4 place and route 5 simulate, with "actual" delays 6 utter expletive deleteds 7 goto 1

Yes, there are many means to constrain the designs and help the place and route, from specifying which timings matter to nailing down functions in individual LUT/CLBs. But they only go so far.

In the part I'm using, LUT delays are 43 ps and net delays between them can easily be 1 ns. I'm looking at a net segment now that is 950ps and it loo ks like it only goes about 3% the width of the die. It's short. (It does go across an IOB column, which is probably part of the problem.) The heuri stics in the synthesizer seem to dislike using MUXF7s and MUXCYs, even thou gh they have dedicated routing, because the LUT delay is only 43ps and that makes it look good. But when the route to it is >500ps, the advantage is lost.

These are nice chips, but the synthesizer is still weak. And it seems odd that a slight rephrasing resulting in an equivalent Boolean expression woul d yield an entirely different synthesis result.

If you are thinking in terms of an AND-OR tree for the typical LUT based FPGA, you aren't going to get it right. Most FPGA's now use the LUT, which, at least for a single LUT, are normally guaranteed to be glitch free for single line transitions (so no need for the bridging terms). If you need more inputs than a single LUT provides, and you need need the glitch free performance, than trying to force a massive AND-OR tree is normally going to be very inefficient, and I find it worth building the exact structure I need with the Low Level, vendor provided fundamental LUT/Carry primatives.