Technical Articles

Using Model-Based Design to Accelerate FPGA Development for Automotive Applications

By Sudhir Sharma and Wang Chen, MathWorks


A recent Gartner Dataquest study predicts that the total worldwide automotive semiconductor market will grow from $20.1 billion in 2007 to $25.9 billion by 2010. The study also predicts that revenue from automotive usage of FPGAs will triple to approximately $312 million during that same period. Many of these FPGAs will be deployed in safety applications such as back-up cameras, lane departure warning systems, blind-spot warning system, and adaptive cruise control. FPGAs will also be deployed in next-generation engine electronics, emissions control, navigation, and entertainment applications. Automotive systems engineers are adept at using Model-Based Design for implementing some of these embedded applications on DSPs and microcontrollers. Many of these engineers are new to FPGA design and face using a fragmented workflow that is making it harder to meet time-to-market and cost objectives.

This paper illustrates how Model-Based Design integrates the world of system designers, FPGA designers, and verification engineers to increase productivity and produce correct-by-construction designs that match system specification. Using executable design specification, this paper discusses how Model-Based Design streamlines both design and verification of FPGAs for automotive applications in two important automotive workflows.

Copyright © 2009 by The MathWorks, Inc. Published by SAE International, with permission.

This paper was presented at SAE World Congress.

Read full paper.

Published 2009

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