State-of-the-art FPGA chips provide multi-core processors (such as ARM Cortex A9), re-configurable FPGA logic and memory resources in addition to different types of I/O interfaces. This provides the possibility to use HW/SW co-design approach to meet the specified design constraints and also optimize the final implementation. The aim of this project is to use an embedded application to explore the capability of such FPGA-based system design considering the performance and security vulnerability issues. An integrated home automation hub application, which integrates different functions in a home such as environmental control, home security, fire detection, entertainment and so on will be used as a case study. Different functions of such application can be divided into different tasks which may interact with each other and are implemented as software or hardware components (HW/SW co-design) on the FPGA platform.
Undergraduate
- A task graph which indicate how different tasks of the system may interact with each other.
- An implementation of such system (or part of it) on the FPGA platform as separate SW/HW components (depending on the task allocation either as a SW component running on ARM processor or a HW accelerator which interacts with the processor core(s) running the other tasks.
Students should have passed COMPSYS 304 (Computer Architecture) with a good grade as a good knowledge of computer architecture is essential for this project. At least one of the team members should have passed COMPSYS 305 too.
Lab allocations have not been finalised