Implementation of FFT on General-Purpose Architectures for FPGA

Abstract

This paper describes two general-purpose architectures targeted to Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) implementation. The first architecture is based on the coupling of a coarse-grain reconfigurable array with a general-purpose processor core. The second architecture is a homogeneous multi-processor system-on-chip (MP-SoC). Both architectures have been mapped onto two different Altera FPGA devices, a StratixII and a StratixIV. Although mapping onto the StratixIV results in higher operating frequencies, the capabilities of the device are not fully exploited. The implementation of a FFT on the two platforms shows a considerable speed-up in comparison with a single-processor reference architecture. The speed-up is higher in the reconfigurable solution but the MP-SoC provides an easier programming interface that is completely based on C language. The authors’ approach proves that implementing a programmable architecture on FPGA and then programming it using a high-level software language is a viable alternative to designing a dedicated hardware block with a hardware description language (HDL) and mapping it on FPGA.