SystemC Environment for FPGA Design, Verification and Transparent Technology Update/Upgrade

Heterogeneous processing systems currently contain a continuum of processing alternatives from general purpose processors, to digital signal processors, to FPGAs and ASICs. Especially the Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) domain has recently produced its own range of architectural alternatives along that processing continuum spectrum. Given this richness of alternatives, optimization has been non-trivial for initial design, as well as for updates/upgrades. Pentum Group, Inc. (PGI) proposes to develop an FPGA programming environment based on SystemVSIPL, an open source signal and image processing library architecture developed by PGI. SystemVSIPL is based on SystemC, which is currently the most widely used language for whole hardware system design and simulation. SystemVSIPL extends the benefits of the open source VSIPL and VSIPL++ signal and image processing standards providing an open component-like library that can run on all current and future FPGA systems with excellent performance.