High Speed Digital Filtering on SRAM-based FPGAs

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) represent a very promising technology that attempts to provide the benefits of custom VLSI with low turn-around time. However, the applicability of this technology for serious DSP applications, that are compute-intensive and typically demand high throughput, has not yet been fully explored. As a case study, real time digital FIR filters of both the constant and programmable coefficient types are considered. Two filters, one of each type, have been successfully implemented in SRAM-based FPGA parts. In the process of design, several generic issues surfaced: the most important among them being efficient utilisation of routing resources. As ever-improving process technology enables higher and higher speeds of operation, density seems to be the more important deciding factor for the feasibility of such applications on FPGAs