Thanks to their performance, flexibility and “any-to”outstanding interfacing capabilities, FPGAs are incredibly popular in high reliability applications. They are often used in space systems such as satellites, launchers, aerospace, and autonomous vehicles. In these high reliability applications, depending upon the use case, the system must be able to keep operating or gracefully and safely fail, […]

The capabilities for Blue Pearl’s Visual Verification Suite are well known for Lint, Clock Domain Crossing Analysis and Design Management. However, there are several capabilities in the tool which are easily overlooked but nevertheless provide the designer with significant benefits, let’slook at five of these. 1. Text Reports – Along with the linting and messages […]

Individuals and businesses alike are taking steps to reduce the risk associated with the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Our foremost concern is that everyone takes the appropriate precautions for the safety of themselves, their families, and co-workers. Blue Pearl Software wants to enable the productivity of our current and potential customers in this challenging environment. […]

Modern FPGA designs are complex systems. They may include processor cores, RTL code and, increasingly, modules developed using High Level Synthesis (HLS). Of course, we still want to analyse the custom RTL created and the overall design for compliance with design methodologies e.g. STARC, Reuse Methodology Manual and Xilinx UltraFast Design Methodologies. We may also […]

State machines are at the heart of our designs. They enable us to implement sequential structures in a parallel programmable logic world. We use them to implement control structures and communication protocols, however complex state machines design can also significantly slow down our development due to the challenges associated in debugging issues, epically if only […]

One of the reasons we use Blue Pearl’s Visual Verification™ Suite is to enter simulation and synthesis with a better quality of code. Improved code quality means we have identified and addressed coding standard violations, structural logic issues, long combinatorial paths and of course, clock domain crossing issues. To ensure the same quality across several […]

When it comes to crossing clock domains it is best, if possible, to implement the crossing using registers which are located close together and have small set up and hold windows. In short, our register structures used for clock domain crossing should be optimized for signals which may go metastable. In our Xilinx designs this […]

All engineers know the earlier we identify an issue in our design, the easier and less costly it is to correct. We also know some issues are easier than others to identify. The worst kind are those which are intermittent and manifest late in the test regime or, even worse, in the field. These late […]

Our FPGA and SoC designs are increasingly complex and used for a wide range of applications from autonomous driving to image processing, machine learning, defence, aerospace and space applications. Of course, while complexity has increased the available development time has been static or reduced. Indeed, both the AspenCore embedded survey 2017 and 2019 indicate the […]

If you have ever aspired to write out-of-this-world RTL, there’s never been a better time as satellites, spacecraft, landers, and rovers are increasingly using FPGAs and ASICs in their sub-systems. Some recent peer-reviews have highlighted poor coding techniques that have resulted in space-electronics failures, e.g. a $1M CubeSat becoming inoperable by getting trapped in a […]