Automotive developer switches to DK1

Leading electronic automotive systems developer Compact Dynamics has adopted Celoxica's DK1 design suite.

Leading electronic automotive systems developer Compact Dynamics has adopted Celoxica's DK1 design suite.

Compact Dynamics will use DK1 to optimise the translation of ANSI-C functions to the Handel-C hardware programming language for the direct implementation of algorithmic designs in Actel FPGAs.

"We were designing a regulator for special waveforms.

The project demanded performance beyond the capabilities of current temperature grade automotive microcontrollers", explained Werner Bals, vice president and head of control systems at Compact Dynamics.

"We had traditionally used VHDL for projects requiring high-speed solutions but the process of converting ANSI-C functions into a hardware description language can be long and complex.

Moreover, VHDL skills are becoming increasingly difficult to resource.

We looked at SystemC but the route to hardware was not complete and the associated tool costs were high.

Wind River supplied a C compiler for the microcontroller and it was at this time that they introduced us to Celoxica.

We could see how the Handel-C language could help address the design challenges we faced and enhance our ability to undertake complex FPGA designs in the future".

Handel-C is a hardware implementation language based on ANSI-C.

Sequential by default, Handel-C combines ANSI-C syntax and semantics with extensions to enable flexible data widths, parallelism and communications between parallel threads, necessary to support hardware design.

This allows engineers with experience of C to design complex algorithms in hardware.

"The design cycle for our first DK1 project was comparable to using VHDL tools but this included a comprehensive period of familiarising ourselves with the new tools and language", said Bals.

"The e-help in DK1 is excellent, as is applications support over the telephone.

Celoxica's ability to quickly solve questions was very important to us in the early stages of adoption, where the learning curve is steepest".

"In the future, Handel-C will enable us to complete projects of greater complexity within a shorter timeframe than VHDL", said Bals.

"Because of Handel-C's transparency, any of our engineers familiar with C will be able to comment on how to optimise the algorithm and define parameters so that many software parts can be quickly transferred into a faster solution.

There is a considerable market for the IP we need but most of it is in C and we would not have the time and resources to accelerate such IP in parallel hardware if we were using VHDL".

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