Re: Occam for FPGAs

["Barry Cook" <Barry@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

It can be (has been) done. I had an experimental compiler that converted 
occam directly to FPGA (Xilinx). It worked very well, producing circuits 
that ran ~3 times as fast as was being reported for the same silicon family 
using Handel-C. However, it had reached the point where further improvements 
required a major re-write when I left University to join industry. In the 
several years since, I have had no time to do any more work with it.

I continue to design FPGA's with a CSP-like approach - but "hand compile" 
what are usually state-machine descriptions of the "Sequential" processes 
(actually, there's a lot of concurrency at each of the sequential steps). 
Synchronised communication between those processes is fundamental to what I 
do.

   Barry.

Dr Barry M. Cook, BSc, PhD, CEng, MBCS, CITP, MIEEE
CTO,
4Links Limited,
Suite E U 2,
Bletchley Park,
Sherwood Drive,
Milton Keynes,
MK3 6EB,
UK.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Lakhani, F.N." <fnl1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <occam-com@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 5:53 PM
Subject: Occam for FPGAs


Greetings,
Can anyone guide me about possibilities of using occam/CSP for FPGAs. Any 
resources available ??? Does occam has enough support for designing FPGAs ??

Thanks.

Regards,
Farah