EVA: Vision Reference Design
Alliance drives joint projects that leverage FPGA-powered and SoC-powered high-bandwidth image processing.
Embedded vision technology has the potential to enable a wide range of electronic products that are more intelligent and responsive than before, and thus more valuable to users. It can add helpful features to existing products. And it can provide significant new markets for hardware, software and semiconductor manufacturers.
The Embedded Vision Alliance (EVA), a unified worldwide organization of technology developers and providers, will transform this potential into reality in a rich, rapid and efficient manner. Two of its founding members, BDTI (Berkeley Design Technology, Inc.) and Xilinx, partnered to co-develop a reference design that exemplifies not only embedded vision’s compelling promise but the role of FPGAs in fulfilling that promise.
BDTI and Xilinx partitioned the design so that the FPGA fabric would handle digital signal-processing-intensive operations, with a CPU performing complex control and prediction algorithms. The exploratory implementation described here connected the CPU board to the FPGA board via an Ethernet interface. The FPGA performed high-bandwidth processing, with only metadata interchanged through the network tether. This project also explored the simultaneous development of hardware and software, which required the use of accurate simulation models well ahead of the final FPGA hardware implementation.
Addititional Information
- Read the full story, “Embedded Vision: FPGAs Next Notable Technology Opportunity,” in Xcell Issue 78