FPGAs for Software Programmers
This book makes powerful Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) and reconfigurable technology accessible to software engineers by covering different state-of-the-art high-level synthesis approaches (e.g., OpenCL and several C-to-gates compilers). It introduces FPGA technology, its programming model, and how various applications can be implemented on FPGAs without going through low-level hardware design phases. Readers will get a realistic sense for problems that are suited for FPGAs and how to implement them from a software designer’s point of view. The authors demonstrate that FPGAs and their programming model reflect the needs of stream processing problems much better than traditional CPU or GPU architectures, making them well-suited for a wide variety of systems, from embedded systems performing sensor processing to large setups for Big Data number crunching. This book serves as an invaluable tool for software designers and FPGA design engineers who are interested in high design productivity through behavioural synthesis, domain-specific compilation, and FPGA overlays.
- Introduces FPGA technology to software developers by giving an overview of FPGA programming models and design tools, as well as various application examples;
- Provides a holistic analysis of the topic and enables developers to tackle the architectural needs for Big Data processing with FPGAs;
- Explains the reasons for the energy efficiency and performance benefits of FPGA processing;
- Provides a user-oriented approach and a sense for where and how to apply FPGA technology.
Why Read This Book
You will learn how to think about FPGAs from a software engineer’s perspective and how to map familiar algorithms to reconfigurable hardware without writing low-level RTL. The book emphasizes practical high-level synthesis approaches (OpenCL and C-to-gates compilers) and shows when FPGAs outperform CPUs/GPUs for stream- and dataflow-oriented problems.
Who Will Benefit
Software engineers and system architects with C/C++ experience who want to accelerate workloads with FPGAs without becoming HDL experts.
Level: Intermediate — Prerequisites: Familiarity with C or C++ programming, basic algorithms and data structures, and a general understanding of parallelism (threads, SIMD). No prior Verilog/VHDL knowledge required.
Key Takeaways
- Map software kernels to FPGA-friendly dataflow and streaming architectures
- Use OpenCL and C-to-gates HLS toolflows to produce FPGA hardware from high-level code
- Evaluate when FPGAs provide speed, latency, or energy advantages over CPUs/GPUs
- Optimize memory access patterns, pipelining, and parallelism for FPGA implementations
- Integrate FPGA accelerators into software stacks and measure end-to-end performance
Topics Covered
- 1. Why FPGAs for Software Programmers? — motivation and use cases
- 2. FPGA architectures and the programming model
- 3. From software to hardware: mental models and design patterns
- 4. High-Level Synthesis overview: OpenCL, HLS, and C-to-gates compilers
- 5. OpenCL on FPGAs: kernels, memory, and host integration
- 6. C/C++ HLS flows: Vivado HLS, Intel HLS, LegUp and others
- 7. Stream processing and dataflow design patterns
- 8. FPGA-based DSP and numeric kernels
- 9. Performance tuning: pipelining, unrolling, and memory optimization
- 10. Toolchains, vendor flows, and synthesis pitfalls
- 11. Verification, debugging, and profiling HLS-generated designs
- 12. Case studies: real-world kernels and end-to-end systems
- 13. Deployment, integration, and future trends in reconfigurable computing
Languages, Platforms & Tools
How It Compares
Covers similar ground to Philippe Coussy et al.'s High-Level Synthesis texts but is aimed squarely at software engineers and practical OpenCL/HLS workflows rather than deep RTL methodology; unlike FPGA HDL primers (e.g., Chu's FPGA Prototyping), it minimizes Verilog/VHDL details.
