FPGA software development & Linux kernel drivers for 4K frame grabber

Challenge

A European company, specializing in the area of safety-critical systems for railway, transportation, and industrial applications turned to us for the development of FPGA software. The project consisted of two parts: framebuffer IP core development and PCI-e core development. 

Solution

1. Framebuffer IP core development

We developed a versatile framebuffer FPGA IP core and an appropriate Linux kernel framebuffer driver. Framebuffer IP core was validated on a custom Kintex-7 PCI-e board and reference Xilinx KC705 board.

The IP core supports:

1. The ability to connect two monitors via two independent frame buffers;
2. DVI, HDMI connection interfaces;
3. PCIe Gen2 8x connection method to PCs;
4. 16-bit high-color, 24-bit true-color;
5. Resolutions:

• 1920х1080
• 1600х1200
• 1920х1200
• 3840х2160

2. PCI-e core development

Our engineers developed and integrated PCI-e IP core into the customer’s FPGA project. They validated it on Xilinx Artix 7, Xilinx UltraScale+, Intel Arria 10, Intel Cyclone 5 platforms.

PCI-e IP core features:

• up to six BARs;
• 4MB allocated size for each BAR;
• 32-bit access to BARs;
• up to 10 DMA channels with 1Gbit/sec throughput each;
• legacy IRQ support;
• configurable number for BARs and DMA channels.

Business value

The customer received the updated PCI-e graphics cards product line, which now supports modern monitors & indicating devices. Promwad FPGA team has successfully integrated PCI-e IP core into the customer's FPGA project. The developed IP core became a building block for PCI-e endpoint FPGA implementations and allowed further modifications to customer's requirements.