High-performance FPGA solutions for flexible and efficient system development
The demands on modern electronics are becoming increasingly complex: flexibility, performance, resource and energy efficiency and real-time capability are key requirements for today’s designs and, in addition to costs and processes, present the biggest challenges. Together with our customers, we address this complexity with high-performance FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) solutions. They enable the implementation of complex electronic functions on a single platform that meets the requirements of modern applications, such as signal processing or artificial intelligence.
Are you already using FPGAs or complex SoCs in your embedded designs, or are you considering adopting them? The inhibition threshold for use is still often high, and the introduction of this versatile technology leads to complex structures in development and organization. This can not only impact efficiency but also significantly reduce performance compared to the market. Through targeted use and integration, our team of experts pushes the limits of what is possible in your embedded solutions, whether in networking, image processing, real-time capability, high-speed computing or data acquisition. We help you develop and integrate hardware and software into your embedded systems, creating a future-proof and scalable platform that enhances agility and efficiency in your organization.
Modern FPGA tooling and languages offer a choice between focusing on development speed or product maturity. Depending on the project type and phase, whether a proof of concept or the final product, the right tools must be selected. The challenge lies in the broad knowledge required: from VHDL to C++, from circuit design to software – as well as the experience to choose a robust design with an optimal development timeline. ITK provides support with tackling all of these challenges in customer projects thank to its many years of FPGA expertise, applied across various industries: in healthcare, in industry, in measurement technology or HiL Automotive environment.
Our FPGA solutions: flexible, high-performance, and real-time capable
Flexibility – FPGAs are programmable, allowing their configuration to be adjusted virtually as often as needed, enabling straightforward product updates and extensions. Their configurable inputs and outputs support a wide range of interfaces, from simple I2C sensors to PCI Express.
Performance – Computing-intensive applications such as signal and image processing or artificial intelligence often require high data throughput, fast transmission rates and high parallel computing power. At the same time, systems must operate within limited space constraints while ensuring low power consumption and heat dissipation. Since FPGA circuits can be adapted to specific requirements, power consumption can be optimized accordingly.
Real-time capability – FPGAs enable hard real-time processing in the nanosecond range and allow the integration of peripheral interfaces for ADCs and sensors into a single chip.
Do you have a specific idea or project in mind?
Based on your challenges, we advise you on individual solutions and work with you to implement customized, powerful and flexible FPGA solutions.
Meeting complex requirements with innovative development approaches
It is possible to work with FPGAs on multiple abstraction levels, ranging from graphical code generators and high-level synthesis (HLS) using C++ to description at register-transfer level (RTL) with VHDL. By incorporating soft cores and system-on-chip FPGAs, these capabilities can be further extended with software and operating systems. This creates a wide range of possibilities, as different levels can be combined, enabling a wide range of solutions.
ITK Engineering, Your Development Partner
ITK Engineering’s experts have demonstrated their ability to meet these challenges in numerous projects. The large solution space enables the convergence of agile software development with traditional hardware development processes. The challenge lies in combining the speed of agile software development using CI/CD with the necessary foresight and precision required in classical hardware engineering. We offer extensive expertise across all relevant domains: methodological know-how, software and system development, FPGA design and hardware engineering. This allows ITK to support its customers throughout the entire software and hardware development process, both through methodological guidance, specific engineering activities or by taking them over completely.
We provide support throughout the entire development process:
A look at our projects:
Agile development process
In software development, agile processes offer significant advantages over traditional methods: improved software quality and faster development times. These benefits can often be transferred to FPGA development as well. However, this requires expertise in both fields.
The challenge:
Development of FPGA solutions with a distributed team
Increasing complexity of FPGA functionality
Rapid response to changing requirements during development
Compliance with and integration into agile software processes due to the growing collaboration between interdisciplinary teams from software and hardware development
Ensuring continuity of development despite personnel absences (e.g., vacation, illness, etc.)
Our solution:
Agile software development for FPGAs
Integration into state-of-the-art tools for agile software development
GIT as a version control system for secure, efficient and deterministic versioning within the team, e.g. using platforms such as Bitbucket, GitHub or GitLab
Docker containers for easy installation and management of various development tools, enabling a standardized and versioned toolchain within the team
CI/CD for FPGA projects to enable pipeline creation and automated testing
Added value for the customer:
Scalable, agile and distributed development
Increased hardware/software quality through regular reviews and automated builds/tests
Greater transparency in communication and project progress
Scheduled tasks and planned processes help identify errors at an early stage and reduce development costs and time
FPGA as a hardware accelerator
One common application for FPGAs is the hardware acceleration of algorithms, e.g. in signal and image processing. Here, the highly parallel architecture of the FPGA can be fully leveraged.
The challenge:
Developed algorithm must be ported from a desktop PC to an embedded device
Meeting high performance requirements
Optimizing the algorithm for resource efficiency (processor time, memory requirements, etc.)
Achieving low power consumption/optimizing performance per watt
Oursolution:
Hardware-software co-design partitioning to optimize system performance
Optimization of architecture, algorithms and data flow for the target hardware
Development of customized accelerators using high-level synthesis (HLS, e.g., in C++) or HDL (e.g. VHDL)
Integration of established common manufacturer acceleration components (e.g. for AI, signal processing, image processing, etc.)
Development of drivers for logic-software interfaces in bare-metal, embedded Linux, or RTOS systems
Added value for the customer:
Massive parallelism, extremely high data rates, improved performance compared to CPU and lower power consumption than GPUs
Flexibility to modify approaches or algorithms during runtime
Better suited for rapid prototyping (compared to traditional hardware development or ASICs)
Use Cases: Many signal and image processing algorithms can be highly parallelized and very efficiently implemented within FPGA structures. This is also one of the key application areas for high-level synthesis (HLS). Algorithms can be implemented in software, then optimized for HLS, and implemented in the FPGA.
High-precision and concurrent real time
Real time is required in many industrial control systems and medical devices. FPGAs can also play to their strengths here.
The challenge:
Electronics with numerous interfaces for sensors, cameras and other peripherals
High-speed interfaces such as PCIe, HDMI or Gigabit Ethernet
Strict real-time requirements combined with low power consumption and low heat dissipation
Future-proofing through flexibility for modifications and expansions
Oursolution:
Use of dedicated, high-precision real-time components in FPGAs, such as clock networks, transceivers, SerDes
Implementation of concurrent computational steps
Use of multiple clock domains to optimize performance/efficiency
Interface between clock domains using user-defined implementation or ready-made libraries (clock domain crossing)
Use of custom HDL and HLS implementations
Use of system-on-chip solutions or soft-core processors, depending on real-time and performance
Added value for the customer:
Fast time-to-market by using the most efficient implementation method depending on real-time requirements (HDL or C/C++ HLS)
Jitter-free and highly precise real-time solutions
Massively parallel computation in different real-time domains without side effects
Expansion of existing solutions with additional computations or real-time domains without impacting timing
Increased utilization of development resources by implementing higher latency requirements in software
Key Takeaways
High flexibility
Efficiency
Cross-domain expertise
Unsolved challenges? We look forward to your inquiry.
