Chapter 15. Implementation Benefits of the RapidIO Interconnect Technology in FPGAs

Nupur Shah

This chapter discusses how field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) have moved to provide support for high-speed interconnects and how the RapidIO interconnect technology can be implemented in FPGAs either by customers or can be purchased as a pre-designed functional block from FPGA vendors. This chapter also shows how such implementations represent a fraction of the overall FPGA resources and capabilities and how FPGAs are becoming an increasingly important component of embedded systems.

Developers of embedded systems have, over the last few years, enjoyed a continuing increase in the speed and gate count of FPGA devices. FPGA vendors have pushed the capabilities of their products to the limits of what can be achieved with semiconductor technology. FPGA vendors are now typically the first vendors to market with new interconnect technologies. New high-speed interconnects based on parallel or serial differential signaled technology, such as the RapidIO interconnect, were identified as important emerging technologies for FPGAs to support, because of this the first RapidIO offerings available in the market were FPGA based.

The FPGA industry has evolved from being a quick and relatively easy solution for providing glue logic in low-volume systems to a mainstream solution for high-performance embedded processing systems that may be deployed in production systems with volumes of hundreds of thousands of units per year. FPGA vendors have realized that their technology should target the designers who want to prototype and produce systems that have high-speed capability and advanced system features. Designers have also discovered that FPGAs can be a way to support emerging technologies that are not readily available and that FPGAs can offer a level of customization that results in greater system flexibility and value.

A technology such as RapidIO offers a wide variety of advanced system features. These include hardware error recovery, software transparency and system scalability. Designers want to build systems that take advantage of these features. FPGAs facilitate the implementation of technologies such as RapidIO while still providing the flexibility of customization. The marriage of such an emerging technology with a programmable device is ideal.