FPGA Prototyping Methodology
Overview

What is FPGA prototyping?

FPGA prototyping is the methodology to prototype SoC and ASIC design on FPGA for hardware verification and for early software development. This methodology is sometimes referred also as ASIC prototyping or SoC prototyping.

1. With SoC designs becoming more complex than ever, designers are increasingly finding it difficult to rely only on software simulations to verify that their hardware design is correct -- due to both simulation speed and modeling accuracy limitations. Running your SoC design on FPGA prototype is the most reliable way to ensure that your design is functionally correct.	2. But, hardware verification is no longer the number one reason why most designs today are prototyped on FPGA. Early software and/or firmware development on FPGA prototypes, pre-silicon, has become more important as many unforeseen software bugs stem from the complexity of integrating operating system (OS), applications, and hardware. Most projects can't afford to wait until the silicon is back from the foundry to start software testing. An at-speed FPGA prototype allows for many extra months of rigorous software development and testing at the crucial software-hardware integration stage.	3. Besides the above two reasons, there is another factor that makes FPGA prototyping so important. If your SoC design utilizes many commercial IP, prototyping on FPGA will be your most reliable method to make sure all these IP work well together.
4. FPGA prototypes can also be used as demo platforms to the SoC customers for getting them interested in the chip you build and allow you to work with them on improving features before chip tape-out.