Hardware & FPGA Development

Big Science control systems mandate using the right technology in the right place. Besides the software frameworks and (sw) programming there's also custom hardware and FPGA development.

FPGA's bridge the gap between hardware and software development. When mastered, they are a best of both worlds, meeting hard real-time requirements, while keeing flexibility and cost-effectiveness of software solutions.  But there's flipside: in the hands of the unexperienced they carry risks with them:

• The ultimate flexibility makes FPGA development an order of magnitude more complex then software development
• FPGA realizations are harder to debug (think meta-stable states, glitches, clock crossing, ...)
• The tools are less developed, best-practices less wide-spread and accessible

Cosylab has extensive experience with FPGA development for control systems. Our experts can answer any questions you may have regarding this technology and its applications. Feel free to get in touch with us.

For more background on the subject there's our Control Sheet Newsletter articles on the subject:

• Timing System complexity
• CosyBricks FPGA - getting a fresh HW team ready for action
• Fiber-optic communication on low end FPGAs in hard real time
• Extreme power Developing With FPGAs: Did Digital Electronics Become a Simple Programming Exercise?
• Extreme power and extreme lure of FPGA programming