Evaluation of high-level synthesis tools for generation of Verilog code from MATLAB based environments

Abstract: FPGAs are of interest in the signal processing domain as they provide the opportunity to run algorithms at very high speed. One possible use case is to sort incoming data in a measurement system, using e.g. a histogram method. Developing code for FPGA applications usually requires knowledge about special languages, which are not common knowledge in the signal processing domain. High-level synthesis is an approach where high-level languages, as MATLAB or C++, can be used together with a code generation tool, to directly generate an FPGA ready output. This thesis uses the development of a histogram as a test case to investigate the efficiency of three different tools, HDL Coder in MATLAB, HDL Coder in Simulink and System Generator for DSP in comparison to the direct development of the same histogram in Vivado using Verilog. How to write and structure code in these tools for proper functionality was also examined. It has been found that all tools deliver an operation frequency comparable to a direct implementation in Verilog, decreased resource usage, a development time which decreased by 27% (HDL Coder in MATLAB), 45% (System Generator) and 64% (HDL Coder in Simulink) but at the cost of increased power consumption. Instructions for how to use all three tools has been collected and summarised.