Lynq: A Lightweight Software Layer for Rapid SoC FPGA Prototyping

Modern FPGAs include a diverse collection of heterogeneous processing elements including microprocessors. However, in many cases, specialized knowledge is required to integrate processing elements, IP hardware cores, memory interfaces and interconnects together. Xilinx recently released PYNQ, an ope...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2018 28th International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL) pp. 372 - 3723
Main Authors DECHELOTTE, Jonathan, TESSIER, Russell, DALLET, Dominique, CRENNE, Jeremie
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.08.2018
Subjects
Computer architecture
Field programmable gate arrays
Hardware
JIT
Kernel
Libraries
Lua
Lynq
PYNQ
Python
Rapid Prototyping
SoC FPGA
Zynq
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Summary:Modern FPGAs include a diverse collection of heterogeneous processing elements including microprocessors. However, in many cases, specialized knowledge is required to integrate processing elements, IP hardware cores, memory interfaces and interconnects together. Xilinx recently released PYNQ, an open-source framework to enable interactive testing, rapid design iteration, and fast prototyping on SoC FPGAs. In this paper we present Lynq, Lua for Lynq, a lightweight software layer for rapid SoC FPGA prototyping on Xilinx Zynq devices. We evaluate the performance and energy efficiency of the new software and assess hardware integration efficiency versus competing approaches. It is shown that we outperform Python implementations with PYNQ even when a JITed version of Python is available. Run-time speedups between x3.2 and x4.9 are shown with an energy improvement of x2.5 to x4.8 versus PYNQ. System bootup is achieved in less than 10 ms which fits time-critical application requirements.
ISSN:1946-1488
DOI:10.1109/FPL.2018.00070