An Application-Oriented Top-Down Scheme for FPGA-Based Embedded System Design with 3D Graphics Applications

In embedded system designs, most researches are involved in the hardware or software design, separately. These methods are effective and efficient for hardware or software (HW/SW) building, respectively. In an entire embedded system, hardware and software co-exist. In addition, software may consist of system and application parts. Thus these HW/SW methods cannot provide an overall and effective evaluation for the performance and cost of an entire embedded system. With the flexibility and configurability of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), this paper investigates an application-oriented top-down scheme (AOTDS) of FPGA-based embedded system design from the application layer down to hardware system. The AOTDS can help reduce the redundancy of system resources and increase their reuse. Since embedded systems are inherently application-specific, rather than all-round like general purpose computers, the AOTDS is natural and efficient for embedded system designs. The efficiency and effectiveness of AOTDS are verified through the implementation of an FPGA-based embedded system with 3D graphics applications.