Delivering FPGA Vision to the Masses

Xcell Daily Blog

By Kiran Nagaraj, Christophe Caltagirone, Dinesh Nair, National Instruments Corp, Dec. 15, 2015 – 

The parallel processing capability of FPGAs, such as those in the Xilinx All Programmable FPGA lineup, is a natural fit for implementing many image processing algorithms. FPGAs can be used for performing both data-intensive processing and high-speed sensor measurements. The devices also have incredibly low latency, which is critical for vision applications because latency accounts for the time that elapses until a decision is made based on the image data. FPGAs can help avoid jitter and thus serve as highly deterministic processing units.

Building a heterogeneous system that includes an FPGA, however, introduces serious programming challenges for system designers. As time-to-market pressures mount, vision system designers need the ability to prototype a solution with complex features quickly. Programming on heterogeneous systems requires a tool that can help the domain expert design intellectual property (IP) functions on multiple platforms and test the vision algorithm before compiling and running the algorithm on the target hardware. The tool should allow easy access to throughput and resource usage information throughout the prototyping process.

NI refers to this as algorithm engineering: the process by which you, the domain expert, can focus on solving the problem at hand without being preoccupied with the underlying hardware technology. NI's Vision Development Module (VDM) with Vision Assistant arms you with that capability.

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