The lack of high-level software tools has been a major hindrance to FPGA adoption in high performance computing in the past. What kind of development environment is supported by the DRC solution?
DRC has simplified the most difficult part of moving software to FPGA hardware by providing the RPU Hardware OS. The simple API for this OS provides the programmer with access to 80 percent of the FPGA logic for his own code but provides a pre-configured and locked design for all physical pins and design issues. The application programmer no longer has to worry about timing for the bus and memory interfaces. Controllers, DMA (direct memory access), backpressure and flow control allow the application to have an independent clock, assuring that data can never overrun the logic or system resources. Remaining programming issues are much more familiar to the application programmer and more easily handled in the C-to-RTL tools provided by our many partners. Celoxica, Impulse Accelerated Technologies, and Mitrionics have all developed support packages for the DRC RPU.
