Microelectronic Systems Institute Leandro Soares Indrusiak Manfred Glesner Ricardo Reis Lookup-based Remote Laboratory for FPGA Digital Design Prototyping Virtual-Lab 2004 Setubal, Portugal

2 Outline Motivation and Background –why FPGAs? Underlying software platform –why lookup-based? Remote Laboratory of Digital Design –what are the advantages? –and how about the disadvantages? Conclusions and Future Work

3 Motivation and Background the design of digital electronic systems comprehends several rather complex tasks prototyping is necessary, for instance: –evaluation of the functionality by the end user –evaluation of performance, power consumption, heat dissipation, etc. under real operation conditions

4 Motivation and Background prototyping of digital integrated circuits (ASICs) is really expensive FPGAs have been used by both companies and universities as prototyping platforms in some cases, FPGAs are even incorporated to consumer products

5 Motivation and Background XCV800 Xilinx Virtex FPGA – system gates – HZ – 100MHZ –166 IO-Pins 2 SRAM-Banks –each 512K*16 Bit 16 Mbit Flash RAM

6 Motivation and Background FPGAs offer –lower cost –more flexibility –faster prototyping cycles –affordable CAD support furthermore –on-the-field updates, reconfigurability (partial and total), etc.

7 Software Platform remote access to FPGAs –prototyped system must receive data from external sources –prototyped system interacts with other subsystems that cannot be physically integrated –users may not be physically co-located with the FPGA resources they want to use software layer to ease remote access is needed

8 Software Platform FPGAs should be accessed regardless of their network location or implementation details Network FPGA Platform A FPGA Platform B FPGA Platform C CLIENT process configure

9 Software Platform our approach: FPGA encapsulation

10 Software Platform –TCP/IP based –middleware-based approach loose coupling between clients and servers alternatives: CORBA, Jini, UPnP, webservices (UDDI+SOAP), etc. clientserver middleware queries for service advertises service FPGA distribution over a network

11 Software Platform Jini –it comprehends a Java-based set of APIs and network protocols that support development and deployment of distributed systems organized as federations of services that are highly adaptive to change –most of the facilities for service lookup, discovery and join are already implemented and freely available –includes a programming model covering leases, events and transactions

12 Software Platform Jini –Jini view of the network doesn't involve a central controlling authority –the set of all services available on the network form a federation - a group composed of equal peers –Jini's infrastructure provides a way for clients and services to find each other

13 Software Platform the basic mechanisms for adding, removing, finding and accessing services rely on the following protocols –discovery: supports both service providers and clients on the location of lookup servers –join: allows the service providers to take part on a federation of services by registering with a lookup server –lookup: supports clients looking for services within the federation

14 Software Platform Server discovery

15 Software Platform Lookup Server Proxy join Server

16 Software Platform Lookup Server Proxy Server Client discovery

17 Software Platform Lookup Server Proxy Server Client lookup key matches

18 Software Platform Lookup Server Proxy Server Client Proxy

19 Software Platform lookup service client reconfigurable hardware service backend service configuration bank create( ) registerService( ) discoverLookup( ) lookupService( ) configure( ) getConfiguration( ) configure( ) process( ) discoverLookup( )

20 Digital Design Remote Lab laboratory activities usually involve iterations over design entry, simulation, synthesis, analysis and prototypation phases a typical design problem is given (e.g. design a triple-DES encryption/decryption module able to support a rate of 100 Mbits/s) and the students work over the CAD tools to achieve an acceptable solution once an implementation is achieved, an FPGA configuration file can be generated and the design can be remotely prototyped using the proposed infrastructure

21 Digital Design Remote Lab Network Reconfigurable Platform B student process configure Reconfigurable Platform A image/video

22 Digital Design Remote Lab reconfigurable hardware module reconfigurable hardware service & lookup service client

23 Digital Design Remote Lab advantages –students can access the lab anywhere and anytime –boards can be shared more efficiently –international design contests –video feed can provide further possibilities by providing visual feedback from measuring instruments –Java-based approach allows for platform independence

24 Digital Design Remote Lab disadvantages –setting up both software and hardware infrastructure can be complicated –currently rely on general purpose video streaming (Microsoft Portrait) and communication (ICQ) packages, which are not available on every platform –working with different FPGA platforms adds complexity board sharing is more difficult, as configurations must be specifically generated backend module is board-dependent

25 Conclusions the technical infrastructure to build efficient access to remote FPGA boards was presented such infrastructure was used to set a remote laboratory for prototyping digital integrated circuits, allowing more flexibility and efficiency than the previously reported approaches

26 Conclusions maintenance costs are lower, but setup costs are higher lack more detailed data about student acceptance lack more work on the integration of remote lab and lectures and/or online courses

27 Future Work integration of the encapsulated FPGA boards within a simulation environment, allowing the users to validate parts of the system simulation model with the parts of the system which are already implemented in the FPGA board develop intelligent service proxies, in order to allow an FPGA board to use other services

28 Thanks for your attention Microelectronic Systems Institute Leandro Soares Indrusiak Manfred Glesner Ricardo

29 Software Platform data type abstraction