2nd International Conference on Advanced Education Technology and Management Science(AETMS 2014)
ISBN:978-60595-212-3
26
Research of the Content and Features of SOPC Technology Course
Xiang-sheng HUANG and Qun WANG
College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, East China Institute of Technology,
Fu Zhou Jiang xi 344000 China
Keywords: SOPC technology, Curriculums, Innovate,Co-design of hardware and software
Abstract: This paper first introduces the SOPC technology, and then studies the main content and features of
SOPC technology course, as well as its position in the curriculums of the major of electronic information
engineering. In this paper, it is pointed out that SOPC technology is a comprehensive technology concerning
different fields, and is a leading technology in EDA field, which has obvious characteristic of innovation. The
course of SOPC technology is very helpful to train students to design a system using different knowledge which
they learned as well as to think creatively. This research will contribute to the teaching of SOPC technology.
Introduction
SOPC (System On a Programmable Chip) is a chip of programming system, or a system on the single chip
based on large-scale FPGA. The SOPC technology is the product of highly development of modern computer
aided design technology, and EDA technology & large scale integrated circuit technology. The goal of SOPC
technology is to try to integrate as large as possible and complete electronic systems including embedded
processor system, interface system, hardware coprocessor or accelerator system, DSP system, digital
communication system, the ordinary digital logic and memory, into a single FPGA, to optimize
the designed
system in dimension, reliability, volume, power consumption, performance, market cycle, development costs,
product maintenance and hardware upgrade etc.
[1] [2] [5]
EDA/SOPC technology has become the principal means
of modern digital system design, it has widely used in the major companies, enterprises, institutions and
scientific research & teaching departments, and has a bright development prospects. The modern electronic
design engineers must master EDA/SOPC technology.
Advantages of SOPC technology
The SOPC technology presents a optimizing software and hardware integrated solution based on the basic
skills of designer in electronic design process. Because of involving the underlying design of hardware and
corresponding software design at the same time, the system optimization has got an unprecedented degree of
freedom. Benefit from SOPC technology, the developers possess more activeness in aspects of synthesize and
build for hardware and software system, then they own the vast space of the creativity and imagination. This
enable the developers to optimize their design greatly from multiple perspectives, multiple factors and multiple
structure level
[1]
.
The emergence of modern large capacity and high speed FPGA and its corresponding SOPC technology,
overcome the insufficient of traditional microprocessors and DSP processor solution. These FPGA usually
configure embedded configurable high-speed RAM, PLL, LVDS, LVTTL and DSP module, such as hardware
multiplication accumulator. The implementation of digital signal processing (DSP) by using FPGA is a good
way to solve the contradictions of parallelism and succession as well as the speed problem. The flexible
configurable properties of FPGA enable DSP system consisting of FPGA to modify and test and upgrade for
hardware easily. Based on the design of traditional DSP processor, due to the processor hardware immutability,
therefore designers work have limited on the design of the software. Otherwise DSP system based on SOPC,
designers own much more degrees of freedom, and their design work can be on the hardware and software.