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F# in Hardware Acceleration by FPGA Chips
f#

Hi all,


Many of you may not

be very familiar with field programmable gate array chips (FPGAs) so Avalda has

released an application that enables you to code F# for FPGAs. FPGAs use true

fine-grained parallelism. If you're a scientist or engineer using F# in your

work then we will show you how to solve problems on FPGA chips using Avalda

FPGA Developer. You can also tell us of problems you're working on which can

benefit from hardware acceleration by FPGAs (eg, DSP algorithms) and we'll try

to help. Check out Avalda's Web site and blog for more info!

cheers,

Stephen Afande
Avalda Corp.
[link:www.avalda.com]

.

Hi Stephen,

Wow.

I have zero experience with FPGA's, but I'm very interested. Might this finally bring the close to the metal C++ guys out from the cold?

regards,

Danny

By on 10/10/2008 7:18 AM ()

Hi Danny,

Perhaps! If they like being close to the metal then they could keep working on C++ for their processor code, and accelerate some of their algorithms on an FPGA. FPGAs can certainly appear daunting at first and that's why we're designing our development process to lower the learning curve. With your feedback we can improve the process. The FPGA vendor tools like Xilinx's ISE are getting better and many FPGA board vendors include tools to make it easier to work on them. Check out Xess. It comes with a simple GUI app to load your design on the FPGA board or move stuff in between the SDRAM and your pc (drag and drop). The site also has great tutorials and some of them are fairly straight forward to get working (like the VGA tutorials). It's pretty exciting to go through the basic steps then see the leds blinking correctly or see images and graphics appearing on the VGA monitor which are directly driven by the FPGA.

cheers,

Stephen

Avalda Corp.

F# to FPGAs

[link:www.avalda.com]

By on 10/10/2008 9:26 AM ()

Hi Stephen,

I'm unclear as to how F# works on an FPGA - surely you haven't implemented the CLR and core .NET libraries on an FPGA?

What sort of subset of the language and libraries can be run on an FPGA? Do you have any examples on your website?

The questions begin...

regards,

Danny

By on 10/11/2008 12:52 AM ()

Hi Danny,

F#'s role in Avalda FPGA Developer is just concerned with the core functional language, and not with re-creating .Net or the CLR on an FPGA. It uses the basic constructs that are common in other functional languages like OCAML and SML with different (parallel) semantics. .Net is suitable for processors and Microsoft is already doing a great job with it. Please download Avalda FPGA Developer and read the documentation for more info and examples!

cheers,

Stephen

Avalda Corp.

F# to FPGAs

[link:www.avalda.com]

By on 10/11/2008 9:18 AM ()

Hi Stephen,

I thought I'd let you know I've managed to get hold of a Xilinx FPGA and Xilinx ISE 9.1. God knows what I'm gonna do with them, but I'll be knocking on your door in the near future. Would the Fourier / wavelet transform be fairly straightforward to implement? Multi-rate audio signal processing? How about parallel monte-carlo?

regards,

Danny

By on 10/17/2008 10:21 AM ()

Hi Danny,

I'm glad you're trying out a Xilinx FPGA! Start with the simple projects to get a feel for the design flow (eg, tutorials from Xilinx's site, board vendor sites, or other fpga project sites/forums like fpga4fun). More complex functionality can be implemented by others, which you can then incorporate into your design in a "black box" manner. No doubt there'll be new stuff to learn and we're working hard to lower the learning curve through Avalda FPGA Developer. Soon I should have some tutorials up on Avalda's blog as well.

cheers,

Stephen

Avalda Corp.

F# to FPGAs

www.avalda.com

By on 10/22/2008 2:49 PM ()

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