Attached Processors

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Earlier versions of Diamond allowed you to describe modules where DSPs are closely associated with an FPGA. This was done when declaring the FPGA processor by explicitly attaching previously-declared DSPs to it, in the following general way:

 

PROCESSOR A TYPE=some_DSP

PROCESSOR B TYPE=some_DSP

 

PROCESSOR X TYPE=some_FPGA ATTACH=A,B

 

Having attached processors, special wires were then declared between the FPGA and DSPs:

 

WIRE W1 A[LINK:0] X[LINK_DEVICE:0]

 

As part of the evolution of Diamond, this mechanism has been changed for the following reasons:

 
•The old mechanism could not easily extend to systems where there is a deeper hierarchy of processors that the configurer may need to create implicitly;

•The method of creating wires between attached processors was not as easy to understand as we would have liked;

•We wished to simplify what users have to do; and

•We wanted to use pre-defined knowledge of supported hardware to perform extra optimizations.

 

Dragons003It is unfortunate that the resulting changes affect configuration files for existing applications, but we are certain that the improved functionality and simplicity are worth the inconvenience of having to make minor modifications. No changes to program sources are required.