Overview

The final project for the course should be a tutorial related to at least one learning objective of the subject:

• Formulate solutions that meet hardware and software requirements for FPGA-SoC (System-on-a-chip) projects
• Integrate a prototype solution for an embedded system with processing and/or real-time requirements via FPGA-SoC
• Interface different modules in an embedded system (processors, firmware, and operating system)

Areas

Some examples of areas that can be explored:

1. Acceleration/implementation of some algorithm in hardware
   • data processing, FFT, compression, cryptography, ...
   • HLD/HLS/OpenCL/Amazon FPGA
2. Performance comparison between different technologies
   • SoC vs GPU vs FPGA vs uC
3. Operating system
   • Real-time scheduler, Linux kernel, Android, embedded RTOS

Previous Years

Take a look at what your colleagues have already done:

• PS3 Hack
• Android for Raspberry Pi 3
• Peripheral to control LED matrix
• Linux driver to turn on LEDs
• SoC and Python
• SDAccel / Vittis - Metropolis algorithm
• Audio on DE10
• Hardware Cryptography - FPGA
• TensorFlow - Jetson Nano
• OpenCL - FPGA
• Yocto
• Jetson Nano - GPU
• FPGA on AWS
• Linux device driver

Technologies/Tools

Below is a list of technologies that can be studied in the tutorial:

• HDL (VHDL/Verilog)
  • Add a custom instruction to NIOS
  • Platform Designer
    • Create a system to control one of the robotics robots
  • Create a peripheral to interface with the external world (read keyboard/motor/LED strip/...)
• High Level Synthesis (HLS)
  • Create a peripheral that accelerates a function (example)
• OpenCL
• Create hardware that accelerates a function Terasic Manual (example)
• Linux
  • real time / energy optimization / 👍 boot time / applications / 👍 Android / openCL ....

Hardware

Below, I tried to summarize the hardware available at Insper and the respective technologies that can be used to develop the projects:

Kit	Company	Technology	vhdl	HLS	OpenCL	Linux	OpenCV	Cuda
Arria 10 SoC	Intel	FPGA + ARM	x	x	x	x	x
DE10-Standard	Intel	FPGA + ARM	x	x	x	x	x
DE10-nano-soc	Intel	FPGA + ARM	x	x	x	x	x
Terasic SoC SoM	Intel	FPGA + ARM	x	x	x	x	x
DE5a-NET-DDR4	Intel	FPGA	x	x	x		x
ZedBoard	Xilinx	FPGA + ARM	x	x	x	x	x
F1 instance	AWS	FPGA			x
Jetson TK2	NVIDIA	ARM + GPU				x	x	x

Example topics/cool ideas

legend: ‼ requires greater dedication

• Creating a SoftProcessor and API to control a Drone
• OpenCV accelerated with OpenCL - ZedBoard
• !! Create an application with HLS/OpenCL that accelerates a function on the FPGA
  • Image processing/data compression/cryptography/fft/...
• ‼ Create an application with OpenCL on AWS
• Embedding ROS on SoC-FPGA (first step to control robotics robots with FPGA)
• ‼ Use the LCD LT24 with Linux (ARM-FPGA Communication)
• Real Time kernel is it really real time? Latency study...
• Optimizing boot time for Linux
• Running Android on DE10-Standard
• Graphical interfaces in embedded systems (e.g.: create a payment kiosk)
• Device driver: Create a Linux driver for some distance sensor
• ‼ Create a peripheral to control the RGB LED strip and create a driver for Linux to control it
• Benchmark between different development kits
• Using yocto as an alternative to buildroot to generate Linux