High speed digital filtering on SRAM-based FPGAs

Field Programmable Gate A r m y s represent a very promising technolo y that attempts t o provide the ben-efits of custom VL & with low turn-around time. How-ever, the applicability of this technology f o r serious DSP applicatiovs, that aTe compute-intensive and typ-ically demand high throughput, has not yet been fully explored. A s a case study, real t ime digital FIR filters of both the constant and progmmmable coeficient types art considered. Twojil ters, one of each t pel have been successfully implemented in SRAM- base%FPGA parts. In the process of design, several generic issues sur-faced: the most important among them being eficient utilisation of muting resources. A s ever-improving process technology enables higher and higher speeds of operation, density seems t o be the more important de-ciding factor for the feasibility of such applications on FPGAs.