학술논문

RapidSmith: Do-It-Yourself CAD Tools for Xilinx FPGAs
Document Type
Conference
Source
2011 21st International Conference on Field Programmable Logic and Applications Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL), 2011 International Conference on. :349-355 Sep, 2011
Subject
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Computing and Processing
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Signal Processing and Analysis
Field programmable gate arrays
Wires
Tiles
Routing
Design automation
Databases
Data structures
FPGA
Rapid Prototyping
Xilinx
CAD Tools
XDL
RapidSmith
Open Source
Placer
Router
Language
ISSN
1946-147X
1946-1488
Abstract
Creating CAD tools for commercial FPGAs is a difficult task. Closed proprietary device databases and unsupported interfaces are largely to blame for the lack of CAD research found on commercial architectures versus hypothetical architectures. This paper formally introduces RapidSmith, a new set of tools and APIs that enable CAD tool creation for Xilinx FPGAs. Based on the Xilinx Design Language (XDL), RapidSmith provides a compact, yet, fast device database with hundreds of APIs that enable the creation of placers, routers and several other tools for Xilinx devices. RapidSmith alleviates several of the difficulties of using XDL and this work demonstrates the kinds of research facilitated by removing such challenges.