Reconfigurable Computing Toolbox r2.0

With a focus on performance, productivity, and portability, the Reconfigurable Computing Toolbox simplifies software acceleration using FPGAs.

The Reconfigurable Computing Toolbox is the premier FPGA supercomputing solution for MATLAB® and Simulink®. DSPlogic’s RC Toolbox removes the barriers to software acceleration using Reconfigurable Computing platforms. From reconfigurable supercomputers to embedded systems, the RC Toolbox allows software programmers to harness the performance of hybrid CPU/FPGA computers. For hardware engineers, the RC Toolbox provides dramatic increases in productivity while maintaining performance and robustness. For applications ranging from molecular dynamics and finance to bioinformatics and DSP, the RC Toolbox’s hardware abstraction and portability protect your programming investment and enable future technologies. Learn More.

Performance

High clock rates, easy expression of parallelism and pipelining maximize software acceleration

  • Would you buy a 1 GHz processor when you can get a 2 GHz processor for the same price? That’s the difference between DSPlogic and our competitors. Our programming language and Platform Compiler have been designed to maximize clock speeds for each RC platform – up to twice the speed of some high-level C-to-FPGA compilers. Same hardware – twice the performance. So which programming tool would you choose?
  • DSPlogic’s graphical programming language also allows you to easily express the fine-grained parallelism and pipelining that are key to performance. High Level Language (HLL) compilers have a notoriously difficult time extracting this information from existing code, if it even exists.
  • Hardware engineers still have access to HDL and low-level programming for further performance optimization, if needed.
  • Our platform optimized CPU/FPGA communications provides maximum acceleration when the FPGA is used as a co-processor.

Productivity

Graphical programming, the Platform Builder and the RC Debugging Toolbox maximize productivity.

  • Graphical Programming – Improves productivity of software programmers with a short learning curve and productivity of hardware engineers with a high-level alternative to HDL for rapid programming.
  • Platform Builder – Just select an RC Platform and the Platform Builder does the rest – automatically generates platform-specific logic and executes FPGA implementation tools. Allows programmers to focus on software, not hardware and platform specific details.
  • Debugging Toolbox – Debug and validate applications remotely - without access to hardware. Use Matlab to easily create input data, verify output data, and visualize results.
  • Design Integration – Easily include existing IP cores, optimized HDL, or the output of high-level C compilers into your program.
  • •Matlab®/Simulink® Integration – Theorize, analyze, visualize, and program accelerated applications in one familiar environment.

Portability

Program your application, not the hardware!

  • Protect the investment you make when you create an accelerated RC application. Hardware abstraction and automatic platform code generation allow you to focus on programming your application, not platform specific details. Take advantage of new FPGA technology and RC platforms without the large cost of application porting.
  • Portable, platform independent CPU/FPGA communications – Easily send data and function call parameters back and forth between CPU and FPGA programs. Bandwidth and latency optimization are handled transparently by DSPlogic’s RCIO libraries.
  • One-click bitstream generation – Easily switch RC platforms without modifying software. Use the Platform Builder to automatically recompile your program into an executable bitstream. While other tools may leave you at the mercy of hardware implementation tools (i.e. synthesis, place and route) the Platform Builder finishes the job.

Example Applications

The RC Toolbox is a general-purpose programming environment that may be used to develop both accelerated software applications and high-performance embedded solutions. Application areas include:

  • Oil Exploration / Seismic Processing
  • Database searching
  • Bioinformatics
  • Software-Defined Radio
  • Remote Sensing
  • Cryptography
  • Digital Signal and Image Processing
  • Astrophysics
  • Molecular Dynamics
  • Crash Simulation
  • Traffic Simulation
  • Signal and Image Processing

One environment for all programmers

  • Software Programmers – Spend your time programming software – not designing hardware
  • Hardware Engineers – Improve productivity without compromising performance. Low-level programming and IP core integration are available for further optimization
  • Scientists – Theorize, analyze, and visualize, and implement algorithms in one familiar environment.

Programming

The RC Toolbox includes a high-productivity and high-performance graphical programming language.

  • With a short learning-curve, programmers can quickly create custom reconfigurable computing applications. The graphical environment makes it easy to visualize the parallel and pipelined program constructs necessary for maximum acceleration.
  • Simple program flow – easily implement loops, conditional branches, case statements and other common programming constructs
  • Math Library – Perform floating-point, fixed-point and integer math operations
  • Parallel memory access – Easily program parallel memory reads and writes for efficient use of underlying hardware and maximum acceleration.

Seamless Matlab®/Simulink® Integration

DSPlogic has created the first and only reconfigurable computing toolbox available for the Matlab/Simulink tool suite. Applications are programmed within Simulink using optimized libraries from the RC Blockset. The RC Blockset allows users to implement programming constructs – from simple loops and branches to advanced parallel operations and memory accesses that cannot be represented in standard ANSI-C.


From within MATLAB/Simulink, you can:

  • Program, debug, and validate FPGA-accellerated software applications
  • Create, analyze, and visualize data
  • Compile FPGA bitstreams for multiple RC platforms

More Information

For more information, please download the product datasheet.