Impulse CoDeveloper

Impulse CoDeveloper™ includes the Impulse C™ software-to-hardware compiler, interactive parallel optimizer, and Platform Support Packages supporting a wide range of FPGA-based systems. Impulse tools are compatible with all popular FPGA platforms.

• Work within Visual Studio, GCC, Eclipse, or other standard IDEs
• Cab mix with VHDL code if desired
• Identify hotspots for acceleration
• Rapidly prototype different behavioral level design permutations
• Accelerate by optimizing design parallelism for FPGA fabric
• Partition design between hardware and software
• Partition design into multiple FPGAs and/or soft core processors
• Partition between FPGA and standard DSP processors
• Compile to Xilinx, Altera, or Synplicity tools for synthesis to FPGA

For Xilinx,

Accelerate MicroBlaze® applications using ANSI C as an input for both hardware and software. Impulse C™ automatically generates synthesizable HDL and MicroBlaze software interfaces.

Impulse CoDeveloper™ is a hardware/software design tool that allows the C language to be used to develop applications for mixed hardware/software platforms including Xilinx MicroBlaze-based Virtex-II or Spartan FPGAs. The Impulse C libraries and compiler tools support multiple programming models, including streams-based programming, allowing a software programmer to make use of available FPGA resources for hardware coprocessing without the need to write low-level hardware descriptions. The compiler tools included with CoDeveloper provide the necessary C to RTL compilation path, as well as providing automated generation of software/hardware interfaces that are specifically optimized for the MicroBlaze processor platforms. This capability makes it possible for an application developer to create a complete hardware/software application with no need to write VHDL or Verilog code. Instead, the CoDeveloper tools create the necessary low-level hardware and software descriptions (in the form of HDL outputs and automatically-generated software libraries) which can then be imported directly into the Xilinx tools for hardware synthesis and implementation. CoDeveloper HDL outputs are also fully compatible with third-party synthesis tools including those available from Xilinx, Synplicity and Mentor.

Impulse C to RTL Flow

1. Write or import ANSI C designs using Impulse MicroBlaze libraries.
2. Compile and debug within CodeWarrior™, GCC™, Visual Studio™, or other.
3. Use CoDeveloper and Impulse C to improve parallelism and identify performance bottlenecks.
4. Automatically generate HW and SW code including MicroBlaze interfaces.
5. Synthesize generated hardware using standard FPGA design tools.
6. Compile software elements using standard MicroBlaze compiler.
7. Verify hardware (as needed) using CoValidator (or other) HDL simulator.
8. Download application to Xilinx MicroBlaze reference platform.

For Altera FPGA, please see

http://www.impulseaccelerated.com/Tutorials/Altera/Tutorial_QuartusII_Generic.pdf