Program-based and model-based PLC design environment for multicore FPGA architectures

Digital design has been growing rapidly during the last years, offering advanced implementation solutions for a diversity of appliances and instruments, integrating different sensors and actuators. This has a great impact on embedded automation, where traditional Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) have been gradually replaced by high performance Embedded Controllers, Digital Signal Processor (DSP) chips and, more recently, power efficient Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). Such new implementation platforms bring together efficient design methodologies, like model-based design and high-level or C level program-based design. In their turn, new design methodologies are accompanied by new design technologies like Intellectual Property (IP) based design and High-Level Synthesis (HLS). This paper presents a design environment that utilizes program-based and model-based design, for the development of PLC applications. Specifically, a tool flow is constructed that supports either the design of new control algorithms or the translation of existing algorithms into C. Then, HLS and FPGA implementation tools are adopted, to implement the selected algorithms as multicore, embedded designs, offering performance improvements and hardware utilization efficiency. Overall, the proposed methodology and underlying tool flow support a novel high productivity prototyping platform for digital control applications, with very promising future extension capabilities.